14 . BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. 



while as many more gave evidence of disease. This established 

 another centre of infection, from which the disease spread in 

 the neighborhood. 



On or about the 1st of December, Leonard Stoddard sold a 

 yoke of oxen to liis neighbor, Mr. Alden Olmstead. These 

 cattle were apparently in health, and no suspicions were enter- 

 tained in regard to them. Mr. Olmstead kept them in his 

 barn for five days with a herd of more than twenty head, and 

 then exchanged them with Mr. William F. Doane, who lives a 

 mile distant. In a short time Mr. Olmstead's cattle became 

 sick and successively died, until he had lost about one-third of 

 them, and the remainder were greatly, many of them fatally 

 diseased. 



Mr. Leonard Stoddard also sold an animal to Mr. A. A. 

 Needham, of New Braintree. The result was, Mr. Needham's 

 herd of twenty-three head became greatly diseased and died 

 rapidly, until he had lost about a third part of them, and the 

 rest had become badly infected. Mr. Leonard Stoddard often 

 passed the barn of A. B. Woodis and fed his oxen in Woodis' 

 barn, whose cattle, about twenty in number, began to sicken 

 and die, until his herd was in as bad a condition as that of Mr. 

 Needham. 



Such in general were the facts, when on the eleventh of 

 April last, the Commissioners entered upon their duties. Only 

 the five herds already mentioned, namely, those of Leonard 

 Stoddard, Alden B. Woodis, A. A. Needham, Alden Olmstead 

 and C. P. Huntington, were certainly known to be diseased. 

 Curtis Stoddard's cattle had been previously disposed of, chiefly 

 at an auction, held on the 2d of November, and though not 

 then known to be diseased, were subsequently found so ; some 

 of them very badly. 



After visiting the above herds and satisfying themselves that 

 tlie disease existed in all of them, the Commissioners decided 

 on the following course of action. Since none of their number, 

 as the commission was then organized, were men of medical 

 science, or had any knowledge of the disease, beyond their 

 present observation, they determined to employ the best veteri- 

 nary surgeons of the Commonwealth, to advise with themselves, 

 to decide what animals " appeared to be diseased," before being 

 killed ; and to make such post mortem examinations as would 



