HEALTH AND CONDITION OF FARM STOCK.

The increasing magnitude of this prominent agricultural interest, and the rapid enhancement of values through judicious crossing and more liberal keeping and skillful management, render important a careful investigation into the condition of farm stock of the country. The increase of disease from want of feed and care, and possibly from deterioration in constitution by injudicious breeding and management, suggests the urgent necessity of examination into its character, causes, and results. An interest involving a capital of fourteen hundred millions, without reference to investments in lands, buildings, and incidentals, demands the watchful care of the public guardians of our national resources.

The winter of 1866-67 was one of unusual severity, and much loss resulted from insufficient provision of feed, as well as from want of protection against cold and storms. In New England and northern New York, where the thermometer often sinks to 20° and 30° below zero, the loss was small, because the farm stock was well fed and comfortably sheltered; in the northwest the feeding was liberal, the shelter often insufficient, resulting in extensive losses; and in the south, where no winter protection whatever is deemed necessary, losses were general and heavy.

In a land where scarcely half the growth of grasses is depastured, it seems little less than deliberate wickedness, and something more than downright inhumanity, that domestic animals should die by thousands of starvation. Because some winters are so mild that the poor cow shivers through them without actual starvation, whole communities leave their cattle to shift for themselves every winter, until one of such severity as the last takes pity on their misery and mercifully ends it. The loss from actual starvation and exposure the past winter has been extraordinary..

In some counties in Texas it is estimated that one-tenth of the cattle died from exposure; in Hall county, Nebraska, a similar proportion was reported; in Mississippi county, Arkansas, "one-fourth died of starvation in consequence of inundation;" and in Houston county, Minnesota, where no disease existed among cattle, many died for lack of proper feeding. Within a day's ride of this city, in Virginia, cattle could be seen in January wandering hopelessly in search of food through snow a foot deep, and hogs burrowing in snow-banks, day after day, with the mercury nearly at zero. In any single day's journey from Virginia to Texas might be witnessed similar exposure and starvation.

The following inquiries have been addressed to the regular corps of statistical correspondents:

"Has there been any prevailing disease among cattle in your county during the past year? If so, what disease, and to what extent?

"Has the Spanish fever prevailed among cattle in your county? If so, when did it appear, what has been the loss, and what method of treatment has been followed?

"Has the hog cholera prevailed? If so, what has been the loss, and what remedies employed?

"What diseases have prevailed among sheep, and to what extent? "Has any unusual disease prevailed among horses?

"In what condition have sheep come out of winter quarters?"

The returns were general and full. They indicate a favorable sanitary condition of farm stock, while revealing disease and resultant loss, in particular localities, sufficient to excite apprehension and stimulate vigilance in applying that prevention which is always so much safer and cheaper than attempted enre. Small as such percentage of loss may be, the aggregate would astonish the farmers of the country. Cattle have suffered less from disease than any other kind of live stock. Horses stand next to cattle in sanitary condition. Sheep have been attacked by a variety of diseases, including starvation, and the conse

quent fatality has been considerable. Swine, always more subject to disease than any other farm animals, have been as unhealthy as ever during the past year. The widely prevailing hog cholera has claimed its victims by thousands, and has been scarcely excluded from any section of the country.

DISEASES OF CATTLE.

Exemption from disease has been quite general in the eastern and northwestern States, and few losses from maladies of whatever character are reported; nor has there been any widely prevailing epizootic among the cattle of the west aad south. The diseases reported are pleuro-pneumonia, the so-called Spanish fever, abortion, horn-ail, bloody murrain, "black-leg," "distemper," "swelled brisket," and maladies with no name or well defined symptoms.

Pleuro-pneumonia.-This disease is reported in Newport county, Rhode Island; in Kings county, New York; in Hudson county, New Jersey; and in Bucks county, Pennsylvania. Our correspondent in Newport, Rhode Island, says: "The cattle disease called pleuro-pneumonia has prevailed in this county to a limited extent for the last three or four years, but it has been considered exterminated several times since its first appearance here. From the best information I can get, I think about ten head of cattle have died of the disease in this county the past year, and probably some thirty more have been sick with it, and have recovered so far as to be fatted for beef. I have heard of no new cases for the last four months, and I hope we are now rid of it in this county. To prevent the spread of the disease, we have kept isolated all cattle known to have been exposed to it until danger of contagion was past, by which means it has been kept within narrow limits."

cows.

In Baltimore county, Maryland, a prevailing discase is reported, which is called "lung fever." It originated in the vicinity of Baltimore, and has spread considerably. In several dairies, numbering from twenty to eighty cows, heavy losses have occurred; in one, thirty cows; in another, twenty; in others, ten to fifteen Various opinions relative to the disease and its treatment are entertained, with little agreement, except as to its contagiousness and the necessity of isolation. Few symptoms are reported by which to decide how this differs from pleuro-pneumonia, or whether it may be identical with it. The animal refuses food when taken sick, and the milk secretion ceases; the lungs are found to be much decayed.

Abortion. This disease has prevailed to some extent in the dairy districts of New York, and in Washington county, Vermont; one or two cases in a herd of twenty cows are common, and in a few instances half the herd have aborted.

Hollow horn.-Several places report the existence of "hollow horn." In Fayette county, Indiana, as a correspondent reports, "it is very common at this season of the year, especially with milch cows, of which one-fifth of the number are affected." In Lawrence county, Alabama, it is reported; in Troup and Houston counties, Georgia; in Lorain county, Ohio; and in Whitley county, Kentucky.

Various diseases.-In Park county, Colorado, a disease known there as "swelled brisket" has occasioned twenty to thirty deaths.

In Barton county, Georgia, and Jackson and Emmet counties, Iowa, losses from "black leg" are common.

Bloody murrain is prevalent in Harford county, Maryland, where fifteen cases and eleven deaths have occurred; in Gloucester county, Virginia; and in Clay county, Alabama. In Gloucester county, Virginia, it is stated that "four-fifthis of those attacked die," and that "the loss is about ten per cent., one year with another." The estimate of loss is scarcely credible, if it is meant that a tenth of all the cattle of the county die annually from this cause.

In many places diseases are spoken of under the vague terms "murrain" and

"distemper." In many cases reported, particularly in the south, these words are common. "Murrain" is prevalent in Barton county, Georgia; in Stokes and Lincoln counties, North Carolina. In Towns county, Georgia, "cattle pastured with cattle from the south take the murrain and invariably die, though those brought from the south do well," (indicating the identity in these cases of "murfain" and Spanish fever.) In Caldwell county, North Carolina, "a disease among cattle known as 'distemper' proves fatal in nearly all cases," while in some cases the words "murrain or distemper" are used.

In Tippah county, Mississippi, the "dry murrain" prevails every autumn to

some extent.

A correspondent in York county, Virginia, says that "cattle brought into the tide-water region of the southern States are subject to bilious dysentery, which proves fatal in most cases."

A correspondent in Buchanan county, Iowa, says: "A disease has prevailed among cattle in the southern part of this county during the latter part of the winter and this spring. The animal is taken with weakness in the fore-legs, heaviness of the eyes, which are much sunken, then a gurgling sound in the windpipe and discharges at the nose, gradually declining until death. Tar has been used as a remedy. About three per cent. have died in that vicinity. The cattle in other parts of the county have not been affected."

Dr. G. M. Brown writes of a disease among cattle in Cumberland county, Virginia, which has prevailed at times for twenty years past, under the names, Carolina distemper," "cattle plague," and "bloody murrain." He is inclined to consider it identical with rinderpest; but, from the description he gives, it is evidently not the cattle plague of Europe, which has never prevailed in this country. When it does appear, it will not be twenty years in making itself generally known.

SPANISH FEVER.

The disease known in a certain belt of country by this appellation, and sometimes as Texas fever, has proved exceedingly fatal, and has excited great apprehension in States in which it has ever raged; and in many cases it has aroused the hot indignation of stock growers against Texan cattle drovers, who have been threatened with combined armed opposition, and compelled to desist from the prosecution of their trade.

Few observers of this disease are qualified to describe its symptoms with sufficient accuracy to enable one to judge of its precise character. Indeed, it is probable that the most scientific medical men, after careful and skillful examination, might differ widely in their conclusions. Our correspondents have furnished much information of a general character, not at all contradictory in the main facts, but by no means full in description of the symptons.

It has been assumed by some to be identical with rinderpest. The assumption is utterly erroneous. The Texas cattle, in whose path of migration the local herds receive the subtle infection and sicken and die without remedy, are themselves exempt from outward signs of disease, while communicating a deadly poison to others, apparently through the excrementitious matter which they leave in their track. This is by no means a characteristic of rinderpest. In this Spanish fever the infected beast, according to these returns, generally has an appetite and eats regularly during the progress of the disease; in rinderpest, on the contrary, the appetite is irregular, capricious, and then entirely lost. In the former, in some cases if not always, the bowels are open; while in the dreaded cattle disease of Europe constipation is the rule, succeeded in the progress of the disease by dysentery. In the Spanish fever there are discharges from the nose, as the disease progresses, of a greenish matter, which may or may not be similar to the greenish yellow and somewhat dense granular deposit upon the nasal orifices in rinderpest.

The duration of the Spanish fever is variable. It appears to reach a fatal termination, in some instances, in two or three days; in others, a week; in others still, ten or twelve days.

It is a singular fact, not only that the migrating herds improve in condition while disseminating the disease, but that such disease does not prevail, if it even exists, in the localities from which the cattle originate. Yet their bodies must contain the germ of disease, the virulent animal poison which is communicated by their excretions to the pastures upon which their victims feed after them.

The conditions necessary for the development of this poison are found in the latitude of southern Kansas and Missouri, in the more elevated sections of Arkansas, in parts of Tennessee, in southern Kentucky, in North Carolina, and the hill lands of Georgia and South Carolina. It is not reported further north than southern Illinois, and not known in Ohio, Pennsylvania, or Maryland.

A convincing proof that its development is referable in some way to climate is shown by a fact mentioned by a correspondent of its existence in the mountain lands of Georgia, generated by removal scarcely fifty miles away from the low lands.

That it is not produced by travel is evident, else cattle driven from Iowa to Ohio should sometimes show symptoms of it. More conclusive still is the fact that Texas cattle driven to New Orleans do not communicate the disease to the cattle of Louisiana. A correspondent mentions a fact which may be regarded as a marked corroboration. Eight hundred Texan cattle were last season driven into Mississippi county, Arkansas, and were scattered through the county without producing disease. This county lies in a latitude sufficiently high to awaken an expectation of a fatal result of such a migration; but it is on the Mississippi river, in a miasmatic region. It is possible that this suggestion covers the reason for the non-development of the disease.

A response from Colonel J. Wilkerson, a man of experience and good judgment, of Athens, Georgia, published in the Southern Cultivator, shows that the same disease attends the migration northwards of Florida cattle. The following comprises the substance of the communication:

"I have been a cattle dealer for twenty-five or thirty years, and in that time have had many a death among my stock by this disease, and have in consequence taken some notice, meanwhile endeavoring to learn its causes and how it was brought about. I notice that cattle scarcely ever take the fever if let remain where they were raised, and I am fully convinced it is generally brought on by a change of climate. For instance, you take cattle from the mountain country to the low country and they will take the fever in a short time and die, but their disease will not affect the cattle raised there; but, on the other hand, take cattle raised in what we call a distempered part of our country-that is, the low country-from warm latitudes, up into a colder one, they will themselves improve all the time; but, without being sick themselves, they will spread the fever and kill the cattle in the section of country into which they are taken, till they travel on, or stay or have staid long enough for the fever to leave the system. I have been in the habit of driving cattle from Florida to Virginia, and found my cattle to improve and do well; but after I passed the line of 34 degrees, they began to spread the fever all along the line of travel among the stock raised in that section of the country, till I struck the line of Virginia, which is a distance of about 250 miles, then it ceased, and all went on well. I suppose the reason for its stopping was, that my cattle had been out of the low country long enough to become acclimated. Hence, I think the disease is originated from a change of climate, either from a colder to a warmer climate, or taking them from a warm climate to a more cool and healthy one. How it is that they carry the disease with them, and give it to others without injury to themselves, is a mystery I am not able to solve, and will leave that to be discussed by the bureau of investigation."

Correspondence from Texas fully corroborated the common assertion that the disease is not found in Texas, and showed that cattle epidemics are practically unknown there. Not a few Texan farmers were inclined to believe the disease a myth, or a story told to injure the sale of their cattle; yet the farmers of Kansas and Missouri have suffered severely from its effects. The following places, among others, have been afflicted with it:

Linn county, Kansas.-The disease was prevalent during summer and fall. Butler county, Kansas.-Cases reported, 141.

Osage county, Kansas.-Loss, $5,000. Not one in twenty recovered. Disease confined principally to the Santa Fé road. Blooded stock were more frequently attacked, and rarely recovered. The cattle of Burlingame, ranging north over the trail, nearly all took the disease and died; those that ranged south, away from it, were exempt.

Leavenworth county, Kansas.-Four visitations in seven years have resulted from arrivals of Texan cattle in three or four weeks after their appearance.

Woodson county, Kansas.-"Some farmers lost all they had, and no less than thirty per cent. of the cattle have died.”

Douglas county, Kansas.-In this locality Texan cattle died during the winter, apparently from the severity of the winter. It is not stated that the disease was communicated to other stock.

Fort Scott, (Bourbon county,) Kansas.-The Spanish fever commenced in May and continued all summer. "Texan cattle did not appear to suffer any ill effect from the disease, but fully one-half of the native cattle in the county died with it."

Franklin county, Kansas.-Three visitations have been experienced in ten years, always when cattle are driven in droves in hot weather. "In the cattle which have died of this fever," the report says, "the manifolds are as hard as a pressed cotton bale."

Howard county, Missouri.-A few cases along roads over which Texan cattle were driven. No treatment was instituted, and all died.

Cass county, Missouri.-Two per cent. of all the cattle in the county died of the disease.

Callaway county, Missouri.—The disease did not spread from the farms on the roads travelled by Texan cattle.

Christian county, Missouri.-Disease was very fatal, but did not spread. Newton county, Missouri.-Fever prevailed from July to October. Many droves were stopped until fall, but no sign of disease appeared among the Texan cattle.

Chariton county, Missouri.-Loss about sixty. Nearly all attacked died in a short time.

Cedar county, Missouri.-Seven-eighths of those attacked die.

Oldham county, Kentucky.-The disease appeared in June, introduced by Texan cattle. "I have had the disease in my herd twice," a reporter says: "the first time I lost 150-nearly all I had."

Fayette county, Kentucky.-The disease broke out in a herd of Kentucky cattle bought at Lexington. It was subsequently ascertained that they had been on a road travelled by Texan cattle. It did not spread.

Perry county, Illinois.-The disease appeared in July among cattle pastured on ground previously occupied by Texan cattle..

DISEASES OF HORSES.

Horses have suffered comparatively little from disease during the past year. Very few cases of disease are reported from New England. In the middle States reports of glanders and lung fever are made from a few counties. In the South there is more complaint of glanders than elsewhere, every State having