468 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



notified ; aud I suggested that be telephone me, and together we 

 would make as careful an examination as we could, and send a 

 specimen to you. 



Yours truly, H. D. Clark. 



FiTCHBURG, Mass., Sept. 1, 1900. 

 Dr. Austin Peters. 



Dear Sir: — Dr. Shaw of Ashby telephoned me this morning 

 that another heifer had died in Mrs. "Woodard's pasture. I went 

 up there, hoping to make a good examination of the carcass and 

 get a specimen to send you, but found the heifer had been dead 

 several days, and was so badly decayed that I could not make a 

 satisfactory examination. I noticed the skin was wrinkled aud 

 cracked open just back of right fore leg and on inside of left 

 thigh ; the right leg and thigh had a bloated appearance. I opened 

 the abdominal cavity, but found the maggots working there in such 

 enormous numbers that I could not make much of an examination. 

 There was a spot on right side of the body, about fifteen by six 

 inches, where the hair was all gone and the skin seemed dry and 

 hard, while the skin as well as the muscles on other parts of the 

 body was very soft. The neck was nearly half eaten off by mag- 

 gots a few inches back of head. 



There was one heifer that Mrs. Woodard thought did not act 

 quite natural (the animal had a scaly skin eruption), and I had the 

 animal with a few others shut off in a small part of the pasture, 

 where she can be better watched. 



Yours truly, H. D. Clark. 



The disease seems to have disappeared here during Sep- 

 tember, as it did in the other towns. A few cases were 

 said to have occurred in Rutland, but these were not offi- 

 cially reported to the Board. Mr. Herrick was informed that 

 there is a large pasture in the western part of Princeton 

 where young cattle are said to die every year, and that 

 trouble has existed there for many years, perhaps as many 

 as thirty or forty. It is said that a few young cattle died 

 in this pasture early in the summer of 1900, but these cases 

 were not reported to the commission, and there was no op- 

 portunity for an investigation. 



Reports were received from more distant parts of the 

 State of deaths among young cattle in Chester and Monroe, 

 and agents of the commission were sent to investigate 



