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. "When the commission was appointed, they went and examined his cattle, and were satisfied that they were diseased,--at least, some of them. They examined his father's herd, and found that they were very much diseased; and when we came to kill Curtis Stoddard's cattle, seven of the nine head were diseased. Two were not condemned, because the law says, 'Cattle not appearing to be diseased, shall be appraised.' Nevertheless, it proved that these animals were diseased; so that his whole herd was affected.