510 AMERICAN CATTLE. 



year a fourth aborted, and M. Ouzel was sent for. He was 

 immediately struck with the unnecessary high condition in which 

 all the cows and their calves were. He carefully inquired, but 

 could discover no other probable cause for these repeated acci- 

 dents, and he at once attributed them to the state of plethora in 

 which the beasts were kept. He ordered their quantity of food 

 to be materially reduced; he bled every one of them ; the farmer 

 took care that nutriment should not afterwards be so danger- 

 ously wasted upon them, and abortion ceased to appear on the 

 farm. 



"Mr. Wedge, in his 'Survey of Cheshire,' confirms this. He 

 says that 'slinking happens generally in wet seasons, or when the 

 cattle are in very high condition, and generally continues for two 

 or three years together. In several parts of North "Wales, 

 where the cattle through necessity are kept in lower condition, 

 instances of the kind very rarely happen.' 



"The pastures on which the blood or inflammatory fever is 

 most prevalent, are those on which the cows oftenest slink their 

 calves. Whatever can become a source of general excitation 

 and fever, is likely, during pregnancy, to produce inflammation 

 of the womb: or whatever would, under other circumstances, 

 excite inflammation of almost any organ, has at that time its 

 injurious effect determined to this particular one. 



"There are some curious illustrations of this. It is well 

 known that cattle of all kinds are sometimes seriously injured by 

 feeding in the autumn on grass thickly covered with hoar-frost. 

 Inflammation of the bowels of a dangerous character, and some- 

 times palsy of the rumen, have been thus produced. In Switz- 

 erland, the commencement of the hoar-frost is the signal for the 

 appearance of abortion. It is occasionally seen at other times 

 in all the cantons, but now its victims are multiplied tenfold. 

 M. Barruel, V. S., of Chartres, speaks of sixteen cows that 

 aborted at different periods of pregnancy, from this cause, and 

 most of which died. 



