•20 BOARD OF AGKICULTURE. 



to what the exigencies of the case required. We waiat to 

 do what will surely protect us from this plague coming 

 through from the West. The first thing we wanted to 

 know was what our danger was. We had a meeting for 

 this purpose early in October. We had no information 

 excepting newspaper reports. We had a meeting in Boston 

 and discussed the matter, and while we did not know any- 

 thing, because the newspaper reports might be more or less 

 true, we decided that we would write to Mr. Coleman, the 

 Commissioner of Agriculture, and ask him certain questions, 

 which was done ; but we got no information ; he did not 

 answer the questions that we asked, except to say that Dr. 

 Salmon and some others had been to Chicago, and it was 

 their opinion that contagious pleuro-pneumonia existed there. 

 What we wanted to know was whether the cattle that were 

 driven from there were infected by contagious pleuro-pneu- 

 monia. We did not get that information, I then wrote to 

 Dr. DeWolf of Chicago, — a Massachusetts man, a noted 

 physician, whom a great many of you know, who is at the 

 head of the Health Department of Chicago. I had seen in the 

 papers that he had become interested in the contest, that he 

 had condemned those distillery stables, and said their milk 

 should not go into the market. The owners of the stables 

 had said it should ; the matter went before the courts, and 

 the doctor won the day. So, supposing he knew all about 

 it, I wrote him to see if he would give me any information ; 

 and, without taking time to go over his whole letter, I will 

 say that he told where the disease broke out first, as far as 

 he knew. He said the first information he had of its ex- 

 istence was on a certain farm about ten miles out from 

 Chicago. A cow and calf were sick, and they were exam- 

 ined by a veterinary surgeon, who pronounced the disease 

 contagious pleuro-pneumonia. They then went to work to 

 find where the cow and calf came from. They tracked them 

 to one of those distillery stables. Then they made an 

 examination of those stables to see what the condition of 

 the cattle in them was, and they found twenty or thirty 

 animals which had come in connection with the disease, and 

 slaughtered every one that proved to be diseased. Then he 

 went on and detailed everything that had been done with 



