6 
J. LAW. 
bright examples of its efficiency. Again and again have these 
States stamped out that bovine plague which is of all others the 
most insidious and destructive, that which, by reason of its pro¬ 
longed incubation, literally “ walketh in darkness,” and, in an 
hour and place that no man feareth, claimeth its victims. 
This plague is that which is now most prominently before 
the public and the veterinary profession in this country, and you 
will foigive me if I detain you by a few words on the subject. 
We have heard from men called veterinarians that this disease 
need create no alarm, that it exists only sporadically, and that 
there is no need for all the hue and cry that has been got up on 
the subject; for it is quite amenable to treatment, and can be 
put a stop to by inoculation ! I do not so estimate the instruc¬ 
tions you have received, as to suppose that any of you could be 
guilty of such assertions, but the country and the world have so 
much at stake in this matter, and such statements are so pre¬ 
eminently dangerous, that, until the land has been purged of this 
foreign “ abomination of desolation,” we can never too constant¬ 
ly nor too strongly condemn all attempts to belittle its baneful 
tendencies. 
In answer to the charge that the contagious lung disease of 
cattle is not a source of danger, need I refer to the thousands of 
millions which it has carried off on the continent of Europe, or 
to the hundreds of millions which it has swept from the small 
island of Great Britain ? It bears but a small figure in history, 
but therein lies its strength and the enormity of its power for 
evil. Cattle plagues have always spread from Eastern Europe 
on the occnrrence of every great continental war. Wherever the 
fatal rinderpest carried swift destruction over the herds, killing 
off all the susceptible in a few days or weeks, it was followed by 
the slow, insidious, and masked lung fever, which numbered its 
victims by twos and threes at intervals of weeks or months, but, 
unlike its prompt and coverless predecessor, continued to hold its 
sway for years, and even decades, and proved in the end by far 
the more disastrous of the two. This is not the army that faces 
us boldly in the open plain and grapples with us in an equal 
warfare, but rather the designer of the masked fort, the unseen 
