268 DISEASES OF POULTRY. 



for a week, and then keeping wholly to grain for another 

 week, and again to hot mashed potatoes for a third week. 

 Cleanliness is no less indispensable than warmth, and 

 it will be convenient to bathe the eyes with warm milk 

 and water, or with Labarraque's disinfecting liquid, 

 which is a solution of chlorinated lime. 



COLDS, CATARRHS, AND PULMONARY CONSUMPTION, OR 

 PHTHISIS. 



HOARSENESS, sneezing, and other symptoms of cold, 

 are very common among fowls, which are more suscep- 

 tible of cold than might be imagined, when we consider 

 their warm clothing of feathers. When it is considered, 

 however, that the air taken into their lungs is not, as in 

 ourselves, stopped there, but by means of the air cells 

 reaches every part of their body, penetrating even into 

 the interior of their bones, we may wonder the less at 

 their great susceptibility of being affected by changes of 

 temperature. It must be considered, also, that fowls 

 were originally, natives of a warm climate ; and though 

 long residents of higher latitudes they still retain so 

 much of their original habits as to influence them in 

 this respect. It is besides, a very common thing for in- 

 dividuals to be rendered more susceptible of changes of 

 temperature than they otherwise would be, by being 

 closely confined in coops by dealers in the markets ; 

 and hence, when purchased and turned out into the fresh 

 air of an open field or of a farm yard, they frequently, 

 to use a common phrase, "catch their death's cold" 

 within a few days. 



M. Flourens, has investigated the nature of the disor- 

 ders produced in fowls, by cold, with great care, and as 

 his observations are not only apposite, I shall give them 

 pretty fully. M. Flourens did not confine his researches 

 to the common domestic fowl, but experimented like- 

 wise on ducks, which he found, conformably to general 

 experience, no less susceptible of catarrhal disorders 

 than fowls, proving that it is not altogether a change of 

 climate which causes such susceptibility. 



M. Flourens being in the country in the month of 



