230 AMERICAN FARMER'S HORSE BOOK. 



fluences ; but while surfeit may run into mange, maqge is 

 entirely beyond surfeit. 



This disease is the offspring of negligence and filth, and is 

 generally found in connection with emaciation and poverty. 

 A horse in good condition may have surfeit, but even if the 

 infection of mange should be communicated to him, it will 

 never reduce him to the condition that farmers term mangy. 

 The very idea of mange is universally associated with star- 

 vation, wretchedness, and misery ; and an old, poor, mangy 

 horse, out on the bleak commons or in an old field, tells 

 such a history more plainly than could any words. 



The first appearance of the disease is a scabby eruption 

 of the skin. The cuticle, or scarfskin, becomes broken into 

 little pieces like scales, which peel off*, leaving the parts be- 

 neath raw and sore, and often bleeding. Before this, the 

 hair will have come off, exposing the skin, which presents a 

 dirty, brown appeaj'ance, and is loose, flabby, and puckered. 

 It is covered with sqales, and raw, red spots. A terrible, 

 burning itching accompanies these symptoms, by which the 

 horse is impelled to a continual rubbing, until it seems as if 

 he would tear the skin off. Every-where he rubs he leaves 

 the scurf, or dandruff, and every animal that repeats the ope- 

 ration at the same place is liable to take tne disease, and is 

 very certain to do so if he is poor and feeble. Mange is ex- 

 ceedingly infectious; but, although cattle, hogs, and even 

 dogs m^y receive the disease from horses, it is never com- 

 municated by them to the latter. 



The least contact, however, is sufficient to impart the dis- 

 ease from one horse to another. It is very dangerous to use 

 the same brush or curry-comb for a well horse that is em- 

 ployed in grooming a mangy one, or to make a similar ex- 

 change of collars. Infection seems to be communicated to 

 the stable also, but may easily be counteracted in the man- 

 ner we shall lay down shortly. 



Cases of this disease are more rare than formerly, thanks 

 to the bettered condition of the American horse, from the 

 increasing enlightenment of our farmers. Judging from the 



