424 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



the expenditure of vast sums of money, and finally the adoption 

 of Massachusetts methods, before the disease was stamped out. 

 As a result, not a case of this disease exists on this continent. 



About two months after the passage of this contagious pleuro- 

 pneumonia act, the same Legislature, on June 12, 1860 (chap- 

 ter 221), authorized an increase of the Board of Commissioners 

 from three to five, and gave them power over " pleuro-pneu- 

 monia or any other contagious disease now existing among the 

 cattle of the Commonwealth." The law was not otherwise sub- 

 stantially varied, and the rule as to compensation was left 

 unchanged, except that it was provided that "the appraised 

 value of such cattle shall be paid, one-fifth by the cities or 

 towns in which said cattle were kept, and the remainder by the 

 Commonwealth." 



After the passage of this act the law remained substantially 

 unchanged until 1878. Contagious pleuro-pneumonia had long 

 before this been stamped out in the Commonwealth. Tuber- 

 culosis at this time had not been considered by scientists as a 

 contagious disease, and therefore was not so considered or 

 treated either by the law or this commission. Prior to this 

 the powers of the commission were limited to diseases in cattle. 

 As a practical question, therefore, there were no diseases in the 

 State calling for their active intervention or over which they 

 had control for years before the matter of glanders was taken up. 



In 1878 (chapter 24) an act was passed providing that : — 



The selectmen of towns, the mayor find aldermen of cities and 

 the cattle commissioners of this Commonwealth shall have and may 

 exercise the powers and sliall be subject to the duties for the preven- 

 tion of the diseases known as farcy and glanders among horses, asses 

 and mules, and for the prevention of contagious and infectious 

 diseases among domestic animals that are now conferred or im- 

 posed upon them by the laws relating to the prevention of contagious 

 diseases among cattle. 



Otherwise the law Avas left the same as previously. No 

 special provision was made in this act as to the matter of com- 

 pensation. As cases of glanders were to be destroyed under 

 the same circumstances as pleuro-pneumonia, the act called for 

 the destruction of animals actually diseased without the pay- 

 ment of compensation, and apparently authorized the destruo- 



