346 
£>. E. SALMON. 
tagious, the Chicago Live-Stock Exchange hereby places at the 
disposal of the Hon. Geo. B. Loring, Commissioner of Agricul¬ 
ture, ten head of cattle, * * * to be placed among any cattle in 
the State of Illinois which the honorable Commissioner may be 
declared to be afflicted with contagious pleuro-pneumonia, and al- 
owed to run and feed with the cattle so diseased, in the same man¬ 
ner as cattle run and feed together on the farm, for the period of 
three months,” etc. The entire expenses to be defrayed by the 
Chicago Live-Stock Exchange. 
These resolutions assume, consequently, that there are two 
points in the reports of the officers of the Department of Agricul¬ 
ture which are so improbable and so questionable that experiments 
involving the loss of three months’ time in the efforts to control 
the disease should be made before a definite conclusion is reached, 
or a decided course of action adopted. These contested points are: 
1st. Does a disease exist on the premises and to the extent re¬ 
ported ? 2d. Is this disease contagious pleuro-pneumonia ? 
The first question needs no experiments to decide it. It is a 
matter of fact which any person or any association can easily 
determine by visiting the affected herds, or even communicating by 
letter with the owners. Nothing has been concealed in the reports 
that have been made. The owner’s name, his location, the num- 
» 
ber of animals he has lost and the number that have been sick 
have been published again and again, and these reports are read¬ 
ily susceptible of verification or disproval. Surely the testimony 
of such men as Mr. O. J. Bailey or Mr. D. II. Tripp, of Peoria, 
or Mr. John Boyd, of Elmhurst, as to the condition of their herds, 
especially when this testimony is unfavorable to themselves, can¬ 
not be called in question. I have before me as I write a letter 
from one of these gentleman, in which he says: “I am fully reali¬ 
zing in my herd your worst fears. ” It seems to me, therefore, 
that the implied suggestion that the reports of this disease were 
“utterly without foundation in fact” was made without reason, 
and is unworthy of further consideration. 
Admitting, as a fact which cannot be successfully contested, 
that a disease exists at the places and to the extent reported, we 
may take into consideration the second question which you have 
