SPANISH OR TEXAN FEVER. 
569 
incurred. All that has been written or said about Texas 
fever confirms the belief that the disease is confined to certain 
districts on the shores of the Gulf of Mexico. Upon this 
point reporters who contradict each other flatly on every 
essential particular of the nature of the plague, are in accord, 
but Mr. Harrison's letter to Dr. Cameron, as quoted by the 
6 Chambers of Agricultural Journal/ cuts at the root of this 
consolatory assurance, and sets us drifting in a sea of specu- 
lation. 
The author of the suspicion which we are now trying to 
discuss says, he shall be very much surprised if cattle from 
the Pampas are not subject to the same diseases as the Texas 
cattle ; but really it seems to be more a matter for surprise 
that they should be so affected and nothing be known of the 
matter. This difficulty, it is true, may be got rid of at once 
if we accept the statements of those who say that Texas cattle 
do not themselves suffer from the disease, which they com- 
municate to other cattle with such effect that 90 per cent, of 
the affected beasts die ; such a condition of things is indeed 
alarming and, worse still, mysterious. Once let the idea be 
accepted, that animals to all appearance in good health carry 
about the germs of a deadly disease, capable of ready com- 
munication, and of so malignant a kind that even the ground 
over which these animals tread becomes contaminated, and 
there is an end of all sense of security for the owners of 
home-bred stock, so long as cattle from distant regions are 
imported into this country. No amount of care in inspec- 
tion, no length of quarantine will avail to protect our herds 
and flocks from animals which are the miserable but uncon- 
scious carriers of an infectious but permanently occult 
disease. 
Medical authorities who have written upon the Texas fever 
do not hold the opinion that Texas cattle are exempt from 
the malady which they impart to others, although they admit 
that they are less, virulently attacked, and also that they less 
readily succumb to the effects of the disease, which is almost 
invariably fatal to cattle that are brought within the sphere 
of the infection. 
If it is true that Texas fever is, like other diseases, indi- 
cated by certain signs, and produces certain effects in the 
organs of those animals in which it is developed, it would be 
possible to obtain some information of its existence on the 
Pampas, and then the remedy would be obvious; but if the 
previous assumption be the correct one, and the affection 
cannot be known to exist, because it is not manifested at its 
origin by any appreciable signs, we are warring against a 
