39G BOAKD OF AGRICULTURE. 



dictate the most hearty co-operation in " stamping it out" 

 in all the States, by urging the Congress of the United States 

 to make large appropriations for the purpose, and the enact- 

 ment of better laws for the regulation of our inter-state 

 commerce. No cases have occurred of other fully recognized 

 contagious disease. As in former years, we have been fre- 

 quently notified of pulmonary disease among this class of 

 animals, which it was feared might take on a contagious type ; 

 but in none of them was that the case, unless it has been in 

 the form of tuberculosis. This finds a i)lace in the category 

 of contagious diseases that has not as yet been fully appre- 

 ciated by the farmers of this or any other State, from the 

 fact that it is so little understood, its period of incubation so 

 long, and the general susceptibility of animals so opposite. 

 As regards its heredity there are so many indisputable facts 

 to prove it, that at the present time it can hardly he ques- 

 tioned. It will develop itself in other animals if they have 

 in any Avay taken the specific germ into their system, and 

 the constitution of the animal is such as to allow of its 

 growth. Experiments have proved that a large proportion 

 of this class of animals is susceptible to its ravages if they 

 are inoculated. Its period of incubation is uncertain, vary- 

 ing from a month or two to a year ; and, in the former, death 

 may occur in a short time, while in the latter, the animal 

 may live to old age, provided no complications occur. The 

 milk and beef of animals in any stage of this disease should 

 ])e proscribed, as it is transmittable to man. Bad hygienic 

 conditions increase the activity of the trouble. The disease 

 is not confined to any special organ or organs ; it is extremely 

 difficult to detect it in its earliest stages, but as the lungs 

 and pleura are more generally involved, the first thing 

 noticed will bo a dry, deep cough, though feeble, and not 

 usually accompanied with a discharge from the nose. When 

 the joints are affected there is lameness, and should the hock 

 joints be the seat of the disease, there will be a wasting of 

 the tissues of the posterior part of the body. The lym- 

 phatics are always involved, and some forms of its develop- 

 ment are not unlike scrofula. 



Notwithstanding all that is certainly known of the disease 

 and the great losses it entails, j^et it is surrounded with such 



