OBSERVATIONS ON THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 621 
followed by forty of his dairy cows, in the short space of three 
months. For the remaining twenty years that he remained in 
in the business he continued to lose from six to ten cows yearly. 
Twenty years ago (1859) Benjamin Albertson, of Queens, 
L. I., purchased four cows from a herd from Herkimer Co., 
but which had been kept over night in the cattle market. 
Sixth Street, New York. These cows sickened soon after, and 
conveyed the plague to his remaining herd of 100 head, 25 of 
which died in rapid succession, and 19 more slowly. He was 
left with but 60 out of a herd of 104 animals, and these he 
sold into already infected Brooklyn stables. 
Hr. Bathgate, of Pordham Avenue and One-hundred and 
seventy-first Street, New York, reports that in the same year 
(1859) his father's herd of Jerseys contracted the Lung 
Plague by exposure to infection, and that the disease pre¬ 
vailed in the herd for several years, and until the infected 
buildings were accidentally burned. He reports further that 
the plague has never been entirely absent from the neighbour¬ 
hood since. 
Cases of this kind might be recorded indefinitely. Enough 
has been given, however, to show that with the advent of 
Peter Dunn's cow, purchased from the English ship, and of 
the infection she carried, there came upon the cities clustered 
around the port of New York a pestilence which has never 
since relaxed its hold on the bovine population. In the 
Skillman Street (Brooklyn) stables alone, which were infected in 
1843, the plague prevailed as long as they stood, and its 
prevalence there was reported by the Massachusetts Commis¬ 
sioners, who visited this city in 1861. Prom that time to this 
it has been constantly extending, not only in the cities named, 
but through the cities and villages of New Jersey, Delaware, 
Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Virginia, as the demand for 
cows caused these to draw upon the market of New York, or as 
the owners of infected herds saw fit to unload their dangerous 
property upon unsuspecting purchasers in new and uninfected 
districts. 
Where the plague was introduced into herds on enclosed 
farms, the unfortunate owners of which were not so selfish 
as to sell out the herd and infection to a new victim, the 
duration of the pestilence was necessarily limited. Sooner or 
later all the cattle on the place had passed through the dis¬ 
ease, and become proof against a second attack, and if no 
calves were raised, as is the rule on farms supplying the large 
cities with milk, and if no new stock was bought in, the dis¬ 
ease expired for the lack of fresh cattle capable of contract¬ 
ing it. In the towns and villages the case was altogether 
