I 



198 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



selves are slowly administering a poison by tlie very means that 

 they are using to restore them to health. 



The rough and rude treatment to which the lungs of our animals 

 are subjected, the vitiated air that they are compelled to breathe, 

 and the artificial temperatures to which they are subjected, show 

 clearly how little the value of a mild and fresh atmosphere is prac- 

 tically appreciated, while the ravages of consumption and the 

 extended catalogue of evils that accompany diseases of the respi- 

 ratory organs point out the vast amount of misery that might be 

 obviated, and death that might be prevented, were the leading 

 principles and requirements more generally understood. Nature 

 has by a simple and efficacious process provided for the ventilation 

 of the lungs, and it is for man, when he makes the free animal a 

 prisoner and subservient to his wants, to use the reason with which 

 he is blessed to imitate the beneficent provisions of nature and to 

 secure for it, as indicated by science, the means to provide in 

 every place which they inhabit a gentle current of that invisible 

 atmosphere that was intended to be the source of life, but which 

 he oftentimes makes a transmitter of disease and death. 



But it is not for the oxygen of pure air alone that we ventilate 

 our stables; there are other reasons that prompt us to it, and with 

 very powerful appeals. The atmosphere is at foddering times 

 filled with a fine, impalpable dust composed of the earth and grit 

 of the fields, which is brought in with the feeding material at the 

 time of harvesting, with the pollen of grass and flowers and 

 minute portions of stalk and leaf, and also the spores and germs 

 of moulds that in damp seasons our fodder is apt to be contami- 

 nated with, and which, when breathed into the lungs, act as 

 foreign matter — as an irritant, and consequently produce conges- 

 tion and inflammation. 



Do not accuse me of drifting from my subject if I speak of 

 another and very essential reason for ventilation, namely, the 

 germ theory of disease. Without going minutely into the matter, 

 it is enough for us to know that modern science has pointed out 

 and has established the fact that the most fatal of our contagious 

 diseases are due to the planting of low forms of life within the 

 animal system; these forms are termed bacteria and are divided 

 into different distinct groups. They are small microscopic bodies, 

 having various forms, and exist in innumerable numbers in all 



