352 
D. E. SALMON. 
characteristics are well known, and there is little danger of a 
competent veterinarian mistaking it even when he sees but one or 
two isolated cases; and when such cases are multiplied as they 
now are there is no longer reason for the slightest suspicion that 
an error has been made. When I say this I refer, of course, to 
professional men who know something of diseases and the means 
of distinguishing between them; those who are without this 
knowledge have no more right to say that the veterinarian can¬ 
not diagnose such a disease when he sees it than the hod-carrier 
would have to say that the chemist cannot distinguish between 
iron and lead in solution by the reagents on liis shelves. 
I desire to remind you, in this connection, that the official re¬ 
ports of a responsible officer of the government, selected because 
of supposed competency in the work upon which he is engaged, 
cannot be justly compared with the idle rumors started by irre¬ 
sponsible men to which the resolutions refer. In the present in¬ 
stance the importance of correct conclusions was so thoroughly 
appreciated that the Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry 
left very pressing duties at Washington, and has given this out¬ 
break of disease his personal attention and investigation from the 
beginning. For six weeks the greater parts of his nights have 
been passed on railroad trains, traveling from place to place, and 
his days have been given to the laborious work of catching and 
examining cattle on the pastures of this and adjoining States, and 
he feels that, whatever may be the opinion of the Live-Stock 
Exchange, he has done his duty and all that was within his 
power to protect the enormous cattle interests of the country 
from an insidious plague that threatens their destruction. 
In what precedes I have endeavored to show that the pro¬ 
posed experiment is unnecessary and uncalled for. Had it been 
considered necessary or even desirable to make such a test the 
Bureau of Animal Industry would not have hesitated to use the 
ample funds placed at its disposal by Congress for making such 
investigations. The insurmountable objection to such an experi¬ 
ment, however, consists in its danger to the cattle industry and 
the loss which it would bring upon it. Every case of pleuro¬ 
pneumonia in the heart of the stock-raising region of the country 
