While at Elgin last week we accompanied Dr. Pratt to his home to take a look at his herd of Holstein cattle. The sight of the long rows of stalls filled with this young breeding milk stock was a surprise. Counting a new arrival of twenty-five during our visit the Doctor now has about 130 head—certainly one of the largest as it is one of the best herds of Holsteins in the country. The Doctor breeds and buys to sell again, and his trade is large, as he does not demand fancy prices but simply a fair return for his investment, care and labor. The famous bull Cyclone heads the home herd. The females are generally from a year and a half to three years old. Duchess of York is his brag cow, though he has other strains nearly as famous for milk. The young bull, Berkhout, a prize winner in Holland, is a capital animal. Though a dull season of the year shipments from this herd are numerous. A bull and three heifers go the present week to J. J. Conklin, Valley Creek, Texas. H. H. Bissell, Navasota, Texas, takes a bull and two females. The promising bull Duke, of Oak Hill, goes to A. H. Woodruff, Lansing, Iowa. Mr. W. also takes a yearling heifer. The Duke weighs 1,650 pounds, and was but two years old the 17th of June last. The Doctor reports the demand from the South as wonderfully increasing. In 1883 he had orders from Texas, Mississippi, Louisiana, Florida, Kentucky and Tennessee. He will stock his ranch in Kansas this spring and summer with a view to supplying the West and Southwest with grades and full bloods. A SCARE IN MISSOURI. Information was received at the Department of Agriculture, at Washington, last week that a new and heretofore unknown cattle disease has broken out in various parts of Missouri. It was reported most prevalent in the vicinity of Mexico. As is usual in such matters when first brought to public notice the facts have been greatly exaggerated. Dr. Salmon, Chief of the Government Veterinary Bureau, who was in Chicago this week, says that as presented to him at Washington he did not consider the outbreak a very serious one. The trouble so far as he knows exists in but a single herd, and that near Mexico. He promptly sent a veterinarian to the spot to investigate and report. He judges from the information he has received that the disease is simply the impaction of food in the stomach, something far from uncommon at this season of the year. It results generally from eating the dried fodder of the corn-fields. It is in no sense contagious. Perhaps our veterinary editor will give us something regarding the treatment of this trouble. In the meantime we give a remedy suggested by a Missouri gentleman who called at this office last week: Keep in a trough before the cattle at all times, a mixture of slaked lime and salt, and let them have free access to good water. PUBLIC SALES OF STOCK. So far as they have come to our notice the following are the principal stock sales announced thus far to take place in 1884: