120 
J. J. HARGER. 
the owners would suffer an excessive, sometimes a ruinous loss 
in the interest of the public welfare. We might say that a 
tuberculous animal is worthless and therefore has no value, but 
we all know that they are sometimes very productive in the 
dairv, and frequently make beef of reasonably good appearance. 
The proper course, and a just one, would seem to be to arrange 
for the division of the loss between the owner and the common¬ 
wealth. A reasonable maximum value foi the cattle for the 
various classes should be decided upon. The conaemned cattle 
appraised within this limit by competent and unprejudiced 
appraisers. After their destruction the owner should receive a 
portion, say one-third or one-half of the appraised value. 
Before closing my remarks on the subject ot tuberculosis, I 
desire to revert to the value of tuberculine as a diagnostic 
agent, and that we are no longer justified in depending only 
upon the methods of physical diagnosis in determining the 
existence of this disease in herds where we have found cases 
existing. Surely it would seem that we have just entered upon 
the real field of learning in regard to one of the probable means 
of the spread and propagation of tuberculosis. 
In a well-timed article recently read by Prof. James Law 
before the New York Veterinary Association, and published in 
the last month’s magazines, this question has been carefully and 
thoroughly discussed. We have been rudely awakened to 
a probable source of danger in this insidious disease. It seems 
that we have not been sufficiently impressed with the import¬ 
ance and influence of this disease. It may be the final explan¬ 
ation why the disease is so wide-spread and so powerful in its 
results. 
We probably have been looking too long for a direct 
transmission of the tubercle bacilli from parent to offspring, and 
straining our eyes looking in the microscope for the existence 
of bacilli in the udder or in the milk, and have wholly lost 
sight of the general distribution of the poisonous products which 
are also present in the animal economy. In other words, we 
have been trying to discover in the body, in the secretions of 
