58 The Lung Plague of Cattle. 



common milch cow, wortli |40 to $70, to the West, where 

 she could be bought for one-half or one-third of thai 

 sum. The same deterrent condition existed in the case 

 of the farms on which the diseased city cows had been 

 brought. Sales were no doubt occasionally made from 

 infected herds, to secure the apparent value of an animal 

 which the owner had good reason to believe to be 

 doomed, and as such animals would, for obvious reasons, 

 be sent as far from home as possible, this became a prin- 

 cipal means of the formation of more distant centres of 

 contagion and the wider diffusion of the malady. But 

 with us the disease has hitherto had to fight against the 

 heaviest obstacles — the current of cattle traffic having 

 been almost without exception from the cheaply-raised 

 herds of the West to the profitable markets of the East. 

 The exceptions have only been in the case of thorough- 

 bred stock, and hitherto our Western stock has escaped 

 contamination by this means. 



"The wonder is not so much that the plague has failed 

 to reach the West, but that in the face of such tremen- 

 dous obstacles it has succeeded in invading all of the six 

 or seven States that are uow infected. In Great Britain, 

 where some would have us believe that the disease is 

 more virulent, we can point to a more satisfactory record. 

 There the great body of the country has been infected 

 for thirty-five years, but the greater part of the high- 

 lands, exclusively devoted to the raising of cattle and 

 sheep, has enjoyed the most perfect immunity. Here, under 

 nearly all possible predisposing causes of lung disease — 

 altitude, exposure, cold, chilHng rains and fogs, the 

 piercing blasts of the Atlantic and German Oceans — this 

 contagious lung disease has never penetrated, though se- 

 verely ravaging the lowlands immediately adjacent. The 

 explanation is, that these hUls support none but the native 

 black cattle, and other breeds are never introduced. In 

 spite of the alleged virulence of the disease in England, 

 it has proved powerless to enter this magic circle from 

 which all but the native stock is excluded. The same 

 holds true concerning some parts of Normandy, Brittany, 

 the Channel Islands, Spain, Portugal, Norway, Sweden, 

 etc. 



"The fact that the disease has maintained a foothold 



