Prevention : Its Necessity. 55 



In view of the overshadowing importance 6f the ex- 

 traction of this and other imported animal plagues, the 

 author cannot be charged with remissness. For over a 

 decade he has been continually sounding notes of alarm 

 and picturing to the nation the terrible and irretrievable 

 devastation that must overtake us should the deadly ex- 

 otic plagues reach our western plains. Coming down to 

 recent times he pressed the matter strongly on New York 

 in his lectures before the State Agricultural Society in 

 1877 and 1878 (see Transactions). He again brought up 

 the subject in his paper read before the Centennial gath- 

 ering of veterinarians at Philadelphia in 1876, and at fre- 

 quent intervals in the New York Tribune, the Farmers' 

 Advocate and the National Live Stock Journal. The fol- 

 lowing article from the National Live Stock Journal for 

 March, 1878, is a sample of these, which should be stud- 

 ied to-day by all legislators, stock-owners and good citi- 

 zens: 



" The Geeatest Danger to oue Stock. The Lung Fevee. 

 Contagious Pleueo-Pneumonia. 



"The Journal has frequently called attention to the great 

 dangers that beset our live stock from imported plagues 

 of foreign origin. During the past year the sudden in- 

 vasion of Western Europe and England by the rinder- 

 pest roused the agricultural community from their dream 

 of safety, and called forth from the Treasury an order re- 

 markable alike for its promptitude and good intentions, 

 and for the fatal blunders which rendered it worse than a 

 dead letter. Once more there seems a prospect of a renewal 

 of these apprehensions, the Kusso-Turkish war having led 

 to an extension of this cattle plague into Hungary, from 

 which the Atlantic coast and Great Britain may be any day 

 infected, owing to the activity of the stock trade. Should 

 this unfortunately take place, it will find us no better pre- 

 pared than we were a year ago, and our Treasury order, now 

 m force, will freely invite the disease to enter, provided it 

 makes its advent respectably — in the systems of blooded 

 s!o-l\ and not in poor cross-bred animals, wliich it woiil 1 



