The Hickman Courier

The Hog Cholera.

One of the items in the general appropriation bill passed by Congress is $15,000 for investigating diseases of swine and infectious and contagious diseases to which all other domesticated animals are subject the diseases whose ravages are the subject of the greatest concern to farmers. The murrain, known as pleuro-pneumonia, has been confined almost exclusively to the Atlantic States, while the hog cholera and the Texas fever prevail chiefly in the West. Very little has been done to discover the causes of the last-named diseases, although one of them, the hog cholera, as it is generally and improperly called--causes an estimated loss of $2,000,000 a year to the farmers of Missouri and Illinois alone. The legislature of Missouri offered a reward of $10,000 for the discovery of a specific remedy for the hog cholera, but such a remedy has not been discovered, and probably never will be. The true policy is to ascertain the nature and causes of the disease and how to prevent it, and that is what the act of Congress proposes by careful examination and experiment. They teach farmers how to protect their herds by feeding and pasturing. The $15,000 will have been well expended.