480 
CORRESPONDENCE. 
and helpless families in case of injuries or death, without elicit¬ 
ing; any reply. We are forced to the front, but cannot get any 
pension. So far, four of our number have lost their Jives in 
active service, and their families are allowed to starve by an 
ungrateful government. We are but fourteen, and naturally 
our cry in the political wilderness of 75,000,000 is too feeble to 
be heard. So we have come to your powerful professional asso¬ 
ciation to submit our case. 
One or two more items and I will close. Beef and other 
meats for army consumption are received and inspected by 
young officers, at the different army stations, who do not even 
assume -to know anything on this subject. Other bovine pro¬ 
ducts—milk, cream, butter—are furnished on the frontier posts 
from cows kept in unsanitary sheds, and subsisting frequently, 
in winter, on stable refuse, with no veterinary supervision as to 
sanitary condition or health. Is it not strange that tuberculosis 
and other fatal accessories to this condition are not more 
prevalent ? 
Commissioned officers of the army are detailed to inspect (?) 
cattle supplied to Indians by contractors, for consumption. 
Pardon my dropping from the serious to the ludicrous. At a 
post in the Northwest, situated on an Indian reservation, an 
old feeble army chaplain, recently appointed, who likely never 
saw a herd of cattle before in his life, has been for some time 
the inspector (?), though stationed at the same point is one of 
the oldest veterinarians in the army, but he had to be ignored 
because not commissioned. Another commissioned officer of 
the army,^ whilst inspecting Indian cattle, was approached by a 
practical joker, who took him aside and in confidence informed 
him : “ Captain, there is not one of those steers that can eat 
grass, they haven’t got a front tooth in their upper jaws. Now 
don’t give me away.” The officer ordered a steer caught 
and cast. There was not an upper incisor to be found, two, 
three, four, five and six more were examined, with the same re¬ 
sult. He condemned the whole herd. It is not related what 
the final result was. 
Humanitarians, one item for you, and -I close. Faithful old 
cavalry horses condemned for old age, and too often suffering 
from acute painful diseases, are sold, like all others, at auction, 
and purchased for a paltry sum, having to wind up their miser¬ 
able existence under new, exacting and brutal masters, when 
they should be humanely destroyed for humanity’s sake. 
Gentlemen, our history inadequately presented, now comes to 
