REPORT OF THE COMMITTEE ON DISEASE. 
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Jasper County, seventeen. These facts led me to believe 
that there is some connection between the chinch bug, or 
the chinch bug disease, in introducing this peculiar disease 
among horses and mules, and I desire very much that each 
member present to-day will bear this account in mind, and 
endeavor to discover whether similar results may not appear 
in other sections where chinch bug disease is prevalent. By 
chinch bug disease I mean the white muscardine fungus. 
Hog Cholera .—Hog cholera developed in many counties 
last fall in this State. In many instances it is attributed to 
the swine from Nebraska and other drouth-stricken sections. 
It ran a short course and seemed to abate before the holi¬ 
days. Within the last two months the disease has broken 
out in a few of the counties in the State and assumed a very 
fatal type. We have been in the habit of attempting to find 
causes for outbreaks by attributing it to the introduction of 
hogs from other States, either coming from an infected terri¬ 
tory or becoming infected in transit, through cars or stock- 
yards. This alone, in my mind, does not account for so many 
outbreaks at some particular season of the year when we 
take into consideration its periodical appearance, which rav¬ 
ages nearly every section of the State about once in every 
six or seven years. I think we must look further for a cause 
than one that would be introduced by importation alone. It 
would not be a surprise to me if some scientist would dis¬ 
cover one of these days that the hog cholera or swine plague 
germ was indigenous to our soil, and that under certain fa¬ 
vorable climatic conditions becomes virulent and fatal. 
In other years it may lie in a latent and dormant con¬ 
dition, or that our native swine do become immunized by 
the constant presence of a non-virile germ. I have known 
numbers of instances where the disease developed simul¬ 
taneously several miles distant from where there was any 
known possible communication between two herds, or any 
other source of infection. The hogs introduced from other 
territory on infected soil might be less resistant to the influ¬ 
ence of this germ than hogs which were bred on the place, 
.and consequently contract the disease, and by so doing rap- 
