With Kilborne, Theobald Smith now built an outlandish laboratory, not between four walls but under the hot sky, and the rooms of that place of science were nothing more than five or six little dusty fenced off fields. On June 27 of 1889, seven rather thin but perfectly healthy cows came off a little boat which brought them from farms in North Carolina, from the heart of the Texas fever country, where it was death for northern cattle to go. And these seven cows were, one and all of them, decorated, infested and plagued by several thousands of ticks, assorted sizes of them, some so tiny they needed a magnifying glass to be seen--and then there were splendid female ticks half an inch long, puffed up with blood sucked from their long-suffering hosts. Into securely fenced Field No. 1, Smith and Kilborne drove four of these tick-loaded southern cattle, and with them they put six healthy northern beasts----“Pretty soon the northerners will be getting the ticks on them too, they have never been near Texas fever.... They are susceptible, and then...?” said Smith. “And now for a little trick to see if it is the ticks we have to blame!” So Theobald Smith did his first little trick--call it an experiment if you wish--it was a stunt a shrewd cattleman might have thought of if he hadn’t been too busy to try it; it was an experiment all other American scientists considered it silly to attempt. Smith and Kilborne set out to pick off, with their hands, every single tick from the remaining three southern cattle! The beasts kicked and switched their tails in these strange experimenters’ faces; it was way over a hundred in the sun, and the dust from the rampaging of the offended cows hung in clouds around them and stuck to their sweaty foreheads. Buried away under the matted hair of the cattle hid those ticks, and the little ones out in the open seemed to crawl away under the hair when the cramped fingers of the searchers went after them. And how those damned parasites stuck to their cow-hosts--there were magnificent blood-gorged lady ticks who mashed up into nasty messes when you tried to pull them off--it was a miserable business! But toward evening of that day they could find never a tick on any of those three North Carolina cows, and into Field No. 2 they put them, along with four healthy northern beasts. “These northerners, perfectly fit for a fatal attack of Texas fever, will be rubbing noses with the southerners, will be nibbling the same grass, drinking from the same water, sniffing at the North Carolina cow’s excretions--but they’ll get no ticks from them. Well--now to wait and see if it’s the ticks who are to blame!”