CATTLE COMMISSIONERS' REPORT. 213 



This motion was carried unanimously, and the Board then 

 adjourned, sine die. 



ANNUAL REPORT OF THE CATTLE COMMISSIONERS. 



To the Honorable the Senate and House of Representatives of the Common- 

 wealth of Massachusetts. 



The Commissioners on Contagious Diseases among Cattle, 

 in making their Annual Report, have occasion to congratulate 

 the people and stock-owners that during the year no con- 

 tagious or prevalent disease has afflicted or decimated the 

 herds of the State. Twice during the year application was 

 made to the Commissioners to visit and examine herds which 

 it was feared were sick with contagious pleuro-pneumouia ; 

 but the examination proved in one case to be ordinary 

 pneumonia, and in the other a catarrhal difficulty, with a 

 sympathetic affection of the lungs. Some loss resulted to 

 the owners, but the alarm created by the report subsided 

 after the visit of the Commissioners. The Legislature, by 

 recommendation of the Commissioners, in 1876, passed an 

 Act, with penalties for its infringement, forbidding all persons 

 and corporations from driving or transporting into this State, 

 Texas cattle, between the fifteenth day of May and the first 

 day of November, unless such cattle had been kept north of 

 the line of the Ohio River through one winter ; and made it 

 the duty of the Commissioners to carry out and enforce the 

 provisions of the Act. In discharge of the duty required by 

 the Act, the Commissioners, in May, caused the law to be 

 published in a sufficient number of newspapers in the State 

 to give it publicity, and sent circulars containing the same to 

 the officers of such railroad corporations as engage to any 

 extent in cattle transposition, and to many of the great cattle- 

 dealers. At intervals during the warm season, one of the 

 Commissioners visited our great cattle-marts to ascertain if 

 the law was complied with, and though there were vague 

 rumors that such was not the fact, yet no proof could be 

 found of a single infringement. And it is believed that both 

 transporters and dealers in cattle have in good faith complied 



