64 CONTAGIOUS DISEASES OF DOMESTICATED ANIMALS. 



Memoirs of the "Philadelphia Society for Promotiug Agriculture," p. 19G, where you 

 will see a pai)er of mine on the subject, which I think will leave no room to doubt as 

 to the cause of the disease. It is a curious fact that the ergot of rye, if grouud into 

 meal with sound rye, wheu made into bread and eateu produces mortilication of the 

 lower extremities in France. (See Memoirs of the same society, volume 3, appendix, 

 p. 5.) 



JAMES MEASE. 

 Chestnut Strket, October 6^ 1838. 



Dr. James Mease, tlie writer of the above, gives the following ad - 

 ditioual information on the same subject: 



In the year 1803, the late Joseph Cooper, of New Jersey, informed me that he had 

 observed the hay made of the natural green grass, or spear-grass {poa viridis), growing 

 <jn his fine meadows, on Petty's Island, made by banking out the Delaware, to be 

 occasionally affected with a black spear, about one-fourth or half an inch in length, 

 somewhat resembling the ergot in rye, and that cattle eating such hay became affected 

 with a disease in their hoofs, causing them sometimes to drop off. He ascribed the 

 morbid production in the grass to neglect in supplying it with water from the river, 

 by means of sluices, during the dry season. Upon my mentioning the facts soon after 

 to the late William Rush, of Philadelphia, an extensive grazier, he confinned them 

 from his own observations at Blooming Grove, near Gray's Court, in the State of New 

 York, in the winter succeeding the very dry summer of the year 1793. The hay was 

 the produce of a bog meadow ; it is presumed, therefore, that it was made from the 

 same natural grass that grew in the meadows of Joseph Cooper. 



Some years after, Mr. W. T. Woodman, of Tredyffrin Township, Chester County, 

 Pennsylvania, communicated to me an account, in the following letter, of a similar 

 disease, and from a like cause, among his father's cattle: 



" Having observed the remark in the Port Folio for May, 1815, in the review of the 

 third volume of the Memoirs of the Philadelphia Agricultural Society, that, ' as yet, 

 in America we have never heard of any human person falling a victim to the ergot, 

 nor indeed is it satisfactorily ascertained that it has ever been injurious to our ani- 

 mals, I think proper to communicate to you an account of a disease which in 1802 

 or 1803 prevailed in this neighborhood among milk cows particularly, but which 

 also affected other cattle and horses. You will perceive that it was analogous to the 

 one supposed to be occasioned by ergot. 



" For my part I am entirely ignorant of the cause, but still I am unwilling to as- 

 cribe it to ergot (with wliich rye in this neigliborhood is more or less affected every 

 year), for this reason, that milk cows, which are never fed with rye by our farmers 

 or butter-makers, exhibited more violent symptoms than oxen or horses. 



"The farmers attributed the disease to a peculiar mildew, which sometimes affects 

 the grass on the bottom meadows of a small stream, the basin of which is very exten- 

 sive, and very luxuriant, and entirely appropriated to meadow land, and suffered to 

 lie under natural grass. No timothy or other grass seeds have ever been sown on it, 

 to my knowledge. 



" The cattle jifiected did not appear to lose their appetite, and while they ate heart- 

 ily of hay and other food became daily more and more lean, manifesting great un- 

 easiness, occasioned most probably by violent itching. Their hair in many places fell 

 off, or was rubbed off by the animal in striving to scratch itself. After these symp- 

 toms had continued for some tune, one or both hind feet became sore and the hoofs 

 loose, at which period the animals began to grow better. Others lost their h()(»fsand 

 part of their legs. Three of my father's cows lost both of their hind feet, and some 

 others in the neighborhood were equally as bad. Tiie legs began by drying and grow- 

 in" smaller fi-om tbe hoof to lialf way between the fetlock and tlie hock, at which 



