character of the disease, in order to determine concerning the necessity
of legislative action.

Mr. Walker, one of the commissioners appointed by the Governor, made the
following statement: "The disease was introduced into North Brookfield
from Belmont. Mr. Curtis Stoddard, a young man of North Brookfield, went
down, the very last of June, last year, and purchased three calves of
Mr. Chenery, of Belmont. He brought these calves up in the cars to
Brookfield. On their way from the depot to his house, about five miles,
one of the calves was observed to falter, and when he got to his house,
it seemed to be sick, and in two or three days exhibited very great
illness; so much so, that his father came along, and, thinking he could
take better care of it, took the calf home. He took it to his own barn,
in which there were about forty head of cattle; but it grew no better,
and his son went up and brought it back again to his own house. In about
ten days after that, it died. His father, who had had the calf nearly
four days, in about a fortnight afterward observed that one of his oxen
was sick, and it grew worse very fast and died. Two weeks after, a
second also sickened, and died. Then a third was attacked and died, the
interval growing wider from the attack of one animal to that of another,
until he had lost eight oxen and cows. Young Stoddard lost no animal by
the infection,--that is, no one died on his hands. Prior to the
appointment of this Commission, about the first of November,--for
reasons independent of this disease, which I don't suppose he then knew
the nature of,--he sold off his stock. He sold off eleven heifers, or
young animals, and retained nine of the most valuable himself; which
shows that he did not then know any thing was the matter with them.

"These nine were four oxen, and five young cattle. The four he took to
his father's, three of the others to his uncle's, and the remaining two
to his father-in-law's; distributing them all among his friends,--which
furnishes another proof that he did not suppose he was doing any
mischief. He disposed of his herd in that way. From this auction, these
eleven animals went in different directions, and wherever they went,
they scattered the infection. Without a single failure the disease has
followed those cattle; in one case, more than two hundred cattle having
been infected by one which was sold at Curtis Stoddard's auction, when
he was entirely ignorant of the disease.