OBSERVATIONS ON THE LUNG PLAGUE OF CATTLE. 711 
stable, soon began to do poorly, and after a whole year (August 
18th, 1879) died of lung plague. 
3. Patrick Green, West Parms, N. Y., entered the Bleach 
in April, 1879, and stocked it with thirty-two cows fresh from 
a healthy district. About May 1st sickness appeared in his 
herd, and then he learned that the tenant of the previous year 
had lost heavily with lung plague. Eleven of the stock had to 
be sacrificed before the disease was finally arrested. 
4. Mr. .John H. Cheever purchased of Mr. Odell a farm at 
Yonkers on which a cow had died of lung plague one month 
before. In the end of September, 1879, he moved on fifteen 
favourite Jerseys, from the Tilly Poster Mine farm near Brewsters, 
placing them in the infected stables. Soon the plague attacked 
the Jerseys, and all died or were slaughtered. 
Such cases could be adduced in great number, but these 
must suffice to show the urgent necessity for the thorough 
disinfection of stables, yards, cars, boats of all kinds, loading- 
banks, piers, &c., where infected cattle have been, in order 
to a permanent extinction of this plague. This disinfection 
should, of course, be the more thorough the closer the infected 
building, and the greater the accumulation of rubbish, fodder, 
&c., in which the virus may find a resting place. With free 
exposure to the open air disinfection takes place naturally and 
early. 
Contagion through the Food. —1. Contagion through pastures 
is exceedingly rare. In the open air, and in climates with 
frequent alternations of rain and sunshine, at seasons when the 
virus, like other organic matter, is not locked up in frost, a 
spontaneous disinfection takes place in a very short period. 
But with continuous frost, or with a very dry, rainless climate, 
the infection may be preserved for an indefinite length of time. 
A striking instance of the conveyance of the infection through 
pastures in a dry climate is furnished in the infection of Australia 
(p. 705). The working oxen put upon the pastures where the 
sick cattle had been were themselves infected, and became the 
means of infecting the entire country. 
The same is unquestionably often re-enacted during the dry 
seasons of our infected states on the common or unfenced 
pasturages on which the herds of different owners graze succes¬ 
sively. It has been a common practice for boys to watch such 
herds in order to keep them apart and prevent infection, but as 
they are allowed to browse successively on the same soil the 
virus is transmitted, and the disease spreads in spite of this pre¬ 
caution, precisely as it did at the start of the plague in Australia. 
The significance of such results cannot be overestimated. 
It has been shown above (p. 702) that the one great cause of 
