The area of "big melt" seems to be pretty clearly defined as extending from San Bruno, 10 miles south of San Francisco, on down the coast to the State line; but the infected area is not continuous. One ranch, extending a few miles, will give off the disease, while the next one is free from infection. So clearly is the area defined that one farm will be rented for the aftermath from year to year, while the adjoining one can not be rented at all. Experience has proved that from 10 to 20 per cent. of the cattle will die on the range of one field while none will even sicken in the other.

The Hon. William Dunphy has a 10,000 acre ranch on the Salinas River, 15 miles south of Solidad. He also owns a large ranch in Nevada. It has been his practice for years to ship over several hundred head of cattle from the Nevada range to the Salinas ranch in the fall to ripen for the early spring market. These cattle generally arrive about October 1, and are turned on the stubblefields adjoining the ranch until the winter rains permit plowing to begin. Then they are turned on the bunch-grass and alfalfa pastures of his own ranch, and are thus in condition to fatten quickly after the rainy season has passed. Mr. Dunphy informs me he loses from 30 to 60 head of these cattle every year during the first forty days after their arrival, but none of the native or heldover cattle die. His experience is different from that of Mr. Miller and all the ranch men on the San Joaquin. Mr. Dunphy never burns or buries the carcasses of dead cattle, and never has experienced any losses from such neglect. Neither was there any trouble from the dead cattle in the two herds above named near Stockton. This raises an important question in my mind: Are the diseases that annually carry off a certain per cent. of Mr. Dunphy's cattle and those which killed the cattle near Stockton identical with that which yearly shows itself on the ranges farther south? Mr. Dunphy lost 30 head in October last, but unfortunately I reached the ranch after the last death had occurred and decomposition was so far advanced that a post-mortem was of no service, nor was I able to see a case on the more southern ranches. The disease had run its length previous to my visit, so I have no means of comparing the symptoms and post-mortem appearance of the disease as manifested in the two cases other than the statements of the non-professional men who examined them. These descriptions I have had from at least fifty men, and they all agree nearly that the only conclusion is that the disease must be the same. Yet here is the very important feature of inoculation from contact with a dead animal in the one case and total exemption in the other. The disease in one case is similar in character and in surrounding circumstances to what we all understand of the splenic fever east of the Rocky Mountains. One of the most distinguishing features of our true southern splenic fever is that cattle from south of the line of infection, when brought in contact with cattle north of that line, give off the disease but do not themselves take it on. Another feature equally well established is the fact that the cattle which sicken and die will not give off the disease while suffering with it or after death. I have seen hundreds of cattle die in Kansas and the Pan Handle of Texas with the splenic fever, and have seen many of them opened after death. After listening to the description of the disease on the Pacific by fifty or more men, as stated above, there remains no doubt in my mind as to the identity of the two diseases, but there are some conditions materially different and these may account for the apparently different results.

There are different types of splenic fever, and a post-mortem of cattle on the San Joaquin may establish the fact that the disease is of a different type from that experienced on the Salinas and near Stockton. My investigations this year were begun sixty days too late to enable me to lay all the facts bare. The different conditions above referred to may be briefly stated thus: In the case of the cattle near Stockton, it was extremes meeting-cattle full of the fever germ coming in contact with those that were totally exempt from such infection. The same is true of the Salinas trouble. The Nevada cattle were free from the disease germs, and on coming in contact with them on their new range they were so susceptible that death resulted, while the located cattle were proof against it by virtue of a sort of everyday inoculation. On the other hand, the San Joaquin cattle sickened in what has, for many years, been an infected country, on their own range, and under such conditions as, perhaps, made the disease more virulent. This is not given as a satisfactory explanation, but merely to show the different conditions. Nothing short of a thorough postmortem will determine the true relations of the disease as it manifests itself every year in the different localities. Mr. Dunphy thinks his losses are occasioned by his cattle eating some kind of poison weed, inasmuch as the deaths always occur after the range is dry and a green weed, though poison, would be tempting. Why, then, would not the native cattle die from the same cause? I spent two days on his range and rode all over it searching for the poison weed, but failed to find it. It is not there.

One gentleman reports that a few years ago he bought 800 cattle in San Luis Obispo County. They were moved a few miles on to an alfalfa pasture. In ten or twelve days they began to die, and he lost 500 of them in a few weeks. They showed no signs of bloat, such as cattle do when they get sick from eating green alfalfa. His explanation of the symptoms is as follows: "They were droopy for a day or two; the hair was rough; some of them run at the eyes and all had high fever; after they had got down they died in from six to thirty-six hours; many of them passed blood both in the urine and the dung, and some in the urine alone." All of the cattle examined after death showed a spleen twice its normal size, and many of them had a diseased liver. "The contents of the stomach were hard and seemingly powder-burnt," was the way he expressed it. Those remaining alive were finally moved off to the mountains, where none died except those that were sick when they reached the new range. The neighbors, of course, called it the "bloody murrain." The gentleman who gave me this statement is a practical cattle man and seemed anxious to give all the facts. It was evidently not blackleg or anthrax, for there was an absence of such symptoms, and none of the sick ones recovered on the march to the new range, which would have been the case had anthrax been the trouble. Nor was it confined to young fat cattle. Old cows, big fat steers, and youngsters all alike were stricken. The pasture was evidently infected with some fatal disease, and all the ascertainable facts point to splenic fever. If not that, what was it? This gentleman says he loses cattle to a greater or less extent every year from apparently the same causes, yet he thinks it is not "Texas fever." He attributes the origin of the disease to warm, dirty water, and to the fact that the grasses grow so luxuriantly that too many cattle are put on a given area-they befoul the feed to such extent that it breeds disease. The cattle referred to in this case were healthy

when purchased, no disease ever having been known to exist among them.

Another gentleman says that he buys a good many cattle in San Luis Obispo County every year and drives to Solidad, about 200 miles. He loses cattle every year from what the people call "big melt." In August last he lost 14 head out of a drive of 250. Almost without an exception the largest and fattest steers died. He attributes the loss to long drives in hot weather and without water. The cattle did not mix with the native cattle about Solidad, so I can not say whether they would have given off disease or not. So many persons have been blood poisoned from skinning big-melt cattle that this gentleman did not open any dead ones. They were dead, and that settled the matter so far as he was concerned.

One gentleman bought 350 cattle in San Luis Obispo County and drove to San José, 250 miles. Forty head of them died in a short time. He says that the spleen and liver were greatly enlarged, contents of stomach dry and hard, flesh next to hide very red, all had high fever, and, although all the doctors in the neighborhood were called in council, not a sick animal was saved.

Many more cases like those above given might be recorded, but these convey an idea of the situation. It is proper, in this connection, to give the following: In the latter part of June, 1886, W. M. Plaster, of Texas, shipped a herd of Texas cattle into Arizona, unloading into the pens at Benson. He claimed the cattle were from Presidio County, and non-infected. Hence his herd was not quarantined, but permitted to move at once on to his range. In reaching their new range they were driven through the San Pedro Valley, where many native cattle were grazing. A few weeks after the arrival of the Plaster cattle at Benson the Barbocomari Cattle Company drove in between 500 and 600 head of beef steers from the range, and shipped out of the same pens into which Plaster had unloaded his Texas cattle. This lot was shipped to California and put in pasture at Kings River. In about fifteen days after their arrival splenic fever developed among them, and 25 per cent. of them died. This was called "big melt," and those familiar with the local disease could distinguish no difference between the symptoms or the post-mortem appearances. After the disease had run its length in this herd of Arizona cattle, Mr. Miller, who was acquainted with the disease, purchased the balance of the cattle and the shipper returned to his ranch. On his way down the San Pedro Valley he saw many dead and dying cattle among the native herds that had grazed over the trail of the Plaster cattle, and all of the symptoms were the same as those manifested by his cattle that had died in California. There is every reason to believe that Plaster's cattle were infected, and that they scattered the germs in the shipping pens and along their trail, and that the disease on Kings River, California, and on the San Pedro, Arizona, were the same and from the same source. All this was undoubtedly the true Southern splenic fever. The exact resemblance of this Kings River disease in symptoms and post-mortem appearances, so far as the most practical men could determine, and the local disease of "big melt" strongly confirms the opinion that they are the same disease, changed, perhaps, a little by focal causes.

ANTHRAX.

California has suffered for years by the ravages of blackleg, or anthrax. It is confined to no section of the State, appearing in the ex

tremes of north and south and from the coast to the eastern boundary. Thousands of cattle die every year from this cause, and it is becoming a very serious question among small breeders. There seems to be several types of anthrax fever on the coast, and its general prevalence has caused the markets to be flooded with all sorts of nostrums, claimed to be preventives and remedies. Considering the natural conditions it is not strange that anthrax should be prevalent. Ordinary years the whole face of the country is one solid mat of the richest kind of food, and animals fatten without an effort. Wild oats, pea-vine, bunch grass, clover, and alfalfa cover hillside and valley, and the general profusion creates that indolence that always and everywhere causes stagnation of blood and great tendency to anthrax. The universal testimony of stockmen is to the effect that coast cattle, on being removed to the interior valleys, very frequently die, especially if the movement takes place during the summer months. The evidence is not sufficiently clear to warrant the expression of an opinion as to whether the disease in these cases is anthrax or some other fever. The losses are quite serious and enough to justify the fullest and most scientific investigation. The feed is generally better on the coast, and hence a great tendency to this disease. The following statement, made by a gentleman living on the coast, in San Luis Obispo County, is one of many such given me by reliable parties: He says that last year his farm lost $2,000 worth of cattle on one small dairy farm. About August they bought 20 cows from a neighbor, 7 miles distant, and moved them to their own place. The cows had been grazing on top of the coast mountains, at this point less than 3,000 feet high, with plenty of grass and good water. The premises to which they were moved were a few hundred feet lower and the grass was a little more abundant, with excellent water. The range consisted of bunch grass, clover, and alfalfa, recognized as the best to be found anywhere. No disease had ever shown itself on either of these farms, yet within a few weeks after the arrival of the 20 cows 16 of them died and a large percentage of the home cattle sickened and died also. The local veterinarians were employed and tried all remedies that could be heard of, but none of the cattle that were attacked were saved by virtue of medicine. Cows in calf sometimes threw off the fetus, and when this happened they always recovered. This discharged fetus was putrid and so offensive as to be unapproachable. No steer recovered, and no cow, except those losing the calf as above. A neighbor on an adjoining farm lost 25 cows out of 90, and half of the balance lost their calves. A postmortem revealed conditions almost identical with those given in former statements-melt greatly enlarged and rotten, liver diseased, and contents of stomach dry and hard. In all cases there was a high fever. More or less trouble of this nature occurs every year, sometimes but little and sometimes quite serious.

Remembering that an area of country over which this trouble extends is very large, and that the cattle are well graded up, it can readily be seen that the annual loss amounts to a very large sum, and that the subject is one worthy of careful investigation.

PROTECTIVE MEASURES REQUIRED.

The vast cattle interests of the State of California are virtually without protection of any kind. The sanitary laws are so meager as to be nil. The $25,000,000 invested in cattle is liable to be wiped

out by the introduction of contagious diseases, and no man can raise his hand against the infectious animal that brings the plague. The coast line of our possessions on the Pacific is nearly 6,000 miles long, and there are many.ports of entry to and from which foreign vessels may come and go. It is true that under the United States Treasury regulations San Francisco is the only Pacific port at which the importation of cattle is permitted. But there are dozens of other ports at which foreign vessels arrive and discharge and take on freight. It is not an uncommon thing for captains of vessels to carry a cow on shipboard when they have their families with them, and it is not a very wide stretch of the imagination to suppose that a single cow might be landed at some of the obscure ports from a sailing vessel, and that disease might follow. But this is not the grave danger. The maps and charts on file in the office of the Chief of the Bureau of Animal Industry at Washington show that almost the entire western shore of the Pacific Ocean is infested with rinderpest, pleuropneumonia, or some other contagious bovine disease. These diseased animals reach the coast, and in various ways the infection is liable to be carried on shipboard, though the cattle remain ashore. Vessels from any or all of these ports are liable to land on our Pacific coast and thus bring the infection to us. Nor is this all. British Columbia lies just over the way to the north, and her port of Victoria is liable at any time to receive an importation of diseased cattle. Many cattle from England, the hot-bed of infectious diseases, have in the past been landed there, and as the stock interests of that country grow more are likely to be required. There is simply an imaginary line between that country and Washington Territory, over which cattle pass and repass at will. With disease once carried east of the Gulf of Georgia on to the main-land, there would be nothing available but a shot-gun quarantine to keep them out of the United States. There is no law or treaty by which reciprocal quarantine could be maintained. South of California is a long line of coast in Mexico and Central America, with many ports and a very considerable traffic. On the other side are the ports around the Gulf of Mexico and the Carribean Sea. While Mexico and Central America are not importing many cattle, there is something done in this way every year, and with almost every country in Europe infected, it is a fair presumption that diseased cattle will sooner or later find entrance at some of those ports. There are hundreds of miles of boundary line on the north of Mexico entirely unguarded, and, as on the north, where cattle are continually changing from one side of the line to the other. Here, then, is a source of constant menace to the cattle interests of the Pacific, with no possible way of avoiding general infection should an outbreak occur in Mexico. There are no sanitury laws in force in that country by which the local authorities would be enabled to grapple with the disease and prevent its spread to the border and over the line. On the east there are seven States where pleuro-pneumonia now exists in an active form, and generally without adequate means of suppression. Railroads from all of the infected States reach out and connect with three main lines of transcontinental roads that terminate in California. The quarantine regulations in most of the States and Territories to the east are very imperfect, and with many diseased cattle already in the channels of commerce, it is uncertain when some of them will reach the Pacific slope and spread contagion broadcast over that fair land.