478 



BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



The question of the advisability of phicing quarantine 

 restrictions on cattle coming into a country or State is one 

 that is thoroughly well established. In Europe quarantine 

 regulations and the requirement of the tuberculin test is very 

 general. On this continent both the United States and 

 Canadian governments require it, and it is also required by 

 several of the different States before cattle are permitted to 

 pass their borders. Unfortunately, the diflSculties in its 

 enforcement are great. The alternative consists in the Board 

 appointing their own agents to do the testing in the various 

 States from which the cattle are generally shipped. Conse- 

 quently, at a meeting of the Board, held October 2, it was 

 decided that the Board should appoint their own agents to do 

 the testing on cattle coming in from without the State ; and 

 in pursuance with this decision the following letters were 

 prepared, and will be issued as soon as the list of out-of- 

 State agents is completed : — 



Letter to Agents. 



Boston, Jan. 1, 1898. 



Dear Sir : — The Massachusetts Board of Cattle Commissioners 

 is of the opinion that, in order to protect the cattle owners of 

 Massachusetts from bovine tuberculosis to the greatest practicable 

 extent, the work of testing cattle outside the State, to be brought 

 into Massachusetts, should be done in the most careful and 

 efficient manner possible. 



In order to perfect this branch of our work as far as we are 

 able, it has been decided to consider those testing cattle with 

 tuberculin, for farmers and dealers, to be brought into this State, 



