292 



NEAV ENGLAND FARMER. 



June 



of a white hard pan. I put about half a gill of 

 superphosphate of lime to each plant, watered a 

 few times with soapsuds, and no other manure. 

 I bad the largest Savoy cabbages that I ever saw. 



In 18-53, I planted a piece of ground with po- 

 tatoes, to prepare for cabbages the next year. 

 The ground was dressed that year with lime, ash- 

 es and salt. The next year it was dressed about 

 as follows, per acre : tweWe loads, or four cords 

 of stable manure, and fifteen bushels of salt, spread 

 broadcast, with eight barrels of ashes. To each 

 ]jlant was applied about one-fourth of a gill of 

 Mapcs's superphosphate of lime. The crop was 

 enough to fully satisfy me. Comings. 



Xe€, N. H., 1860. 



THE CATTIiB DISEASE. 

 Action of tlie Sta.te Board of Agriculture. 

 A special meeting of the State Board of Agri- 

 culture was held at the State House Tuesday, May 

 15th, to consider the subject of the pleuro-pneu- 

 monia, and to devise some mode of action with 

 reference to the matter. Members were present 

 from every section of the State. Col. Wilder 

 was requested to preside, and on taking the chair 

 announced the business to be in relation to the 

 cattle disease, which is assuming an alarming in- 

 terest. The first vote passed was to dispense 

 with the proposed State Exhibition at Springfield 

 in September next. Dr. LoEiNG, one of the Com- 

 missioners, made a statement in regard to the op- 

 erations of the Coramissiou, and presented the 

 following memorial to the Board : 



MEMORIAL OP THE COMMISSIONERS. 

 To the MassaeJittgetts Board of Agriculture : 



The Commissioners appointed under the act of the Legislature 

 of Massachusetts to extirpate the disease called Pleuro- Pneumo- 

 nia, now existing in certain towns in the Commonwealth, have 

 toecn for several weeks endeavoring to accomplish the work as- 

 signed them. The difficulties- under which they labored in the 

 outset were very great. The disease had existed for many months 

 in the locality to which it had been transplanted. By sales and 

 exchangeof animals, it had been scattered abroad throughout 

 a section of country whose chief business is agriculture, and 

 where the isolation of many of the farms rendered it difficult to 

 trace iL The delay incident to legislation, had complicated 

 and extended the trouble. An entire insufficiency of funds ap- 

 propriated for the purpose check the work of extermination, 

 and thf unexpected extent of territory xvhich contained the in- 

 fection, and through which the Commissioners have been obliged 

 to feel their way, rendered their task perplexing and burden- 

 some to the highest tlegree. They found, moreover, that beyond 

 a narrow circuit where the disease had done its work of actual 

 destruction, the public mind was not aroused to a sense of the 

 danger. Tlie farmers ivho were more remote from the early 

 scene of the catastrophe were reposing in confidence, and were 

 even congratulating themselves upon their safety, while they 

 were daily inviting the incendiary to their own homesteads. — 

 Nothing but a series of facts, established with great labor and 

 delay by the Commissioners, aroused them to a full sense of 

 their danger. And it was not until the certainty of the infec- 

 tion was demonstrated beyond a doubt that they remembered 

 how carelessly they liad purchased animals from t)ie original 

 seat of the disease, or had worked their teams inconnection with 

 those belonging to a distempered herd, or had fed their cattle in 

 infected stables, or Iiad paused by the roadside to discuss with a 

 neighbor the condition of some sickly creature which was then 

 breathing death into the nostrils of its dumb companions. 



The difficultieswhich existed in the outset have not dimin- 

 ished, as the work has gone on, and its extent has opened. 

 Where there was at first apathy, there is now alarm. The calls 

 to investigate districts where the slightest suspicion rests, are 

 incessant. Discoveries of recent exposure are numerous ; and 

 already the Commissioners fear that, in spite of their untiring 

 efforts to pursue every animal that can possibly have carried 

 the disease with him, and to extirpate every vestige of his path, 

 some may have escaped them, and have carried the disease be- 

 yond their reach. In addition to this, herds that have been 



confined through the winter are now roaming over the pastures, 

 and unless the infection is checked at once, no man can tell the 

 devastation which must attend its course as it goes on from one 

 enclosure to another, -eluding the strictest vigilance and defying 

 the most careful investigation. 



In spite of all obstacles, the Commissioners have not hesitated 

 to go to the fullest extent of their powers in the discharge of 

 their duty. They have placed an injunction one very suspected 

 herd. They have destroyed all that gave the slightest appear- 

 ance of disease, from the poor man's single cow, to the large 

 and choice collections of the most extensive farmers. They 

 have explored every spot which has been brought to their notice 

 as having been in any way exposed, and have endeavored to as- 

 certain the limits beyond which it seems impossible that the dis- 

 ease can have j^rogressed. 



The central point of the infected district, it is well known, is 

 North Brookfitld, the farm of Leonard Stoddard, into which the 

 disease was thoughtlessly and innocently introduced, and from 

 which it has been carelessly allowed to go out. Around this spot 

 the destruction is complete ; but few animals, indeed, being left 

 in the unfortunate to«-n. The disease has been discoverc<l in 

 the north, in those parts of New Braintree, Oakham and Rut- 

 land lying contiguous to North Brookfield; on the east, in 

 Spencer; on the south, in Brookfield and Sturbridge ; and on 

 the west, In West Brookfield, Ware and Warren. It is believed 

 that the precise course and extent of the disease have been ex- 

 plored in each of these towns. 



The number of persons whose cattle have been condemned or 

 destroyed, is 75. The number of animals already marked or 

 killed, is 7.50. 



The Commissioners wish they could assure the Board of Agri- 

 culture and the community that their work will end here. But 

 they cannot. The fire that is wasting prairie and forest mayai>- 

 pareutly be (luenched for a time ; and it is only when, on the 

 distant horizon, its terrific work is painted, and heaven and 

 earth seems all ablaze, that the insidious and appalling power 

 of the elusive element comes home to the heart of its pursuers. 



This is not the time nor the place to enter into an investiga- 

 tion of the history and character of the disease — that, it is hoped, 

 may be done hereafter. But it is important that the public 

 should know and appreciate the full extent of the contagion. 

 That the disease is peculiar to itself there can be no doubt what- 

 ever. The name, Pleuro-Pneumonia, which has been applied 

 to it, and which in its ordinary acceptation signifies inflamma- 

 tion occupying the pleura and lung at the same time, does not 

 by any means indicate its true character. The inflammatory 

 stage of the disease is hardly perceptible. But throughout the 

 substance of the lungs, and in the membrane covering them and 

 lining the cavity of the chest, there seems to have been diffused 

 a morbific poison, under the influence of which the vitality of 

 the parts is threatened with speedy destruction. The contagion 

 is inevitable. Wherever an animal has been exposed, in that 

 animal the disease is sure to be found. Every creature that 

 wentout from Leonard Stoddard's herd carried the malady with 

 him, and imparted it wherever he went. In no case has an an- 

 imal been examined on account of its history, that the disease 

 has not been found in a greater or less degree. In whatever 

 herd the disease exists, the animal that carried it there can be 

 pointed out, and hisexjiosure traced back to that wretched calf 

 that went from Belmont to North Brookfield. The disease is 

 not epidemic. It is not found except as the result of contagion. 

 It has broken out in no spot without a known and well-authen- 

 ticated cause. But it passes from animal to animal in its deadly 

 career, marking every victim that comes within its fatal grasp 

 as surely as the water of Tofana or the poison of Brinvilliers, 



To keep the p'.ague within its present limits, and to draw a 

 cordon arour^l [he inftcted district, is now the great object of 

 the Commissioners — a work which the nature of the disease ren- 

 ders practicable, and which nothing but public apathy and in- 

 action will prevent. They have only to ask that public senti- 

 ment will sustain them in staying the ravages of an enemy 

 which, once allowed to roam unrebuked, would strike a destruc- 

 tive blow at the great industry of our country — that industry 

 upon which wo all depend, and whose security from panic and 

 crisis is exemplified by the everlasting hills upon which it rests. 

 Standing upon the high lands of the diseased region, the behold- 

 er can cast his eye over miles of beautiful swelling pastures, the 

 richest, by far, in our State, where roam thousands of cattle, 

 the solid wealth and active force in the agriculture of an indus- 

 trious people. The destroyer has laid his hand upon the very 

 heart of his victim. In no section of ou(»State could the conse- 

 quences of his reign be so disastrous as in that which he now 

 threatens ; and in none is the opportunity for his progress so 

 great. Tlie soil sickens at the thought of his escape ; for should 

 his sway become supreme, and North and South, East and West, 

 mountain and prairie and savannah, hill and valley, own his 

 sceptre, who can tell the consequences.' To say that millions 

 would be lost in a business whose profits are counted by units, 

 to say that fear and despair would take the place of hope and 

 security, is to tell but half the story. For into our very homes, 

 with the nourishment upon which our lives depend, we should 

 daily bring the seeds of disease and decay. Let those who would 

 charge tlie Commissioners with recklessness of animal life, I'e- 

 member this, and know that when the task of extermination is 

 abandoned in despair, if abandoned it is, a rich and prosperous 

 country is delivered over to a blight and a curse ; to the "pes- 

 tilence which walketh in darkness, and to the destruction which 

 wasteth at noonday." 



That this is no exaggerated picture, let the present condition 



