" One gentleman reports that a few years ago he bought eight hundred 

 cattle in San Luis Obispo County. They were moved a few miles on to an 

 alfalfa pasture. In ten or twelve days they began to die, and he lost five 

 hundred of them in a few weeks. They showed no signs of bloat, such as 

 cattle do when they get sick from eating green alfalfa. His explanation of 

 the symptoms is as follows: ' They were droopy for a day or two; the hair 

 was rough; some of them ran at the eyes, and all had high fever; after 

 they got down they died in from six to thirty-six hours; many of them 

 passed blood both in the urine and the dung, and some in the urine 

 alone.' All of the cattle examined after death showed a spleen twice 

 its normal size, and many of them had a diseased liver. ' The contents 

 of the stomach were hard and seemingly powder-burnt,' was the way 

 he expressed it. Those remaining alive were finally moved off to the 

 mountains, where none died, except those that were sick when they 

 reached the new range. The neighbors, of course, called it the ' bloody 

 murrain.' The gentleman who gave me this statement is a practical 

 cattleman and seemed anxious to give all the facts. It was evidently 

 not blackleg, or anthrax, for there was an absence of such symptoms, 

 and none of the sick ones recovered on the march to the new range, 

 which would have been the case had anthrax been the trouble. Nor 

 was it confined to young, fat cattle. Old cows, big fat steers, and young- 

 sters all alike were stricken. The pasture was evidently infected with 

 some fatal disease, and all the ascertainable facts point to splenic fever. 

 If not that, what was it? 



"This gentleman says he loses cattle to a greater or less extent every 

 year from apparently the same causes, yet he thinks it is not ' Texas 

 fever.' He attributes the origin of the disease to warm, dirty water, and 

 to the fact that the grasses grow so luxuriantly that too many cattle are 

 put on a given area — they befoul the feed to such extent that it breeds 

 disease. The cattle referred to in this case were healthy when purchased, 

 no disease ever having been known to exist among them. 



"Another gentleman says that he buys a good many cattle in San Luis 

 Obispo County every year and drives to Soledad, about two hundred 

 miles. He loses cattle every year from what the people call ' big melt.' 

 In August last, he lost fourteen head out of a drive of two hundred 

 and fifty. Almost without an exception, the largest and fattest steers 

 died. He attributes the loss to long drives in hot weather and without 

 water. The cattle did not mix with the native cattle about Soledad, so 

 I cannot say whether they would have given off disease or not. So 

 many persons have been blood-poisoned from skinning 'big-melt' cattle, 

 that this gentleman did not open any dead ones. They were dead, and 

 that settled the matter, so far as he was concerned. 



" One gentleman bought three hundred and fifty cattle in San Luis 

 Obispo County and drove to San Jose, two hundred and fifty miles. 

 Forty head of them died in a short time. He says that the spleen and 

 liver were greatly enlarged, contents of stomach dry and hard, flesh 

 next to hide very red, all had high fever, and, although all the doctors 

 in the neighborhood were called in council, not a sick animal was saved. 



" Many more cases like those above given might be recorded, but these 

 convey an idea of the situation. It is proper, in this connection, to give 

 the following: In the latter part of June, 1886, W. M. Plaster, of Texas, 

 shipped a herd of Texas cattle into Arizona, unloading into the pens at 

 Benson. He claimed the cattle were from Presidio County, and non-in- 



