THE GENESEE FARMER. 



243 



•women and children were scattered about on all sides. 

 Blacksniilhs' hanuncrs were heard, and the hum of 

 preparation came up from all parts of" the camp. It 

 was a singular sight, and fraught with many sugges- 

 tions and. reflections upon this strange and deluded 

 people. These emigrants are generally from Europe, 

 and the most of them do not speak a word of Eng- 

 lish. They liave a long journey before them. ^J'he 

 cholera is said to be among them ; but I have heard 

 so many rumors of this disease out west on the rivers, 

 (fee, and have seen so little of it, that I have lost all 

 confidence in the truth of these stories." 



Ours is indeed a strange land, and we are fast be- 

 coming a strange people. Between Europe on the 

 east and Asia on the west, this continent is soon to 

 become the greatest thoroughfare of mankind in the 

 known world. Immigrants from China and from 

 Europe meet on the summit of the Rocky Moun- 

 tains, and are fast filling up all the plains on either 

 side of the great spine of the New World. 



FOUL-IN-THE-FOOT. 



This is a disease in the feet of cattle. It presents 

 a close resemblance both to footrot in sheep and to 

 mild cases of quittor in horses, but really differs from 

 both. M. Favre, of Geneva (Switzerland), inocu- 

 lated the feet of sheep with purulent matter from the 

 feet of cattle suffering with foul-in-the-foot ; but he 

 did not succeed in producing any symptoms similar 

 to those of footrot. Foul-in-the-foot-appears to be 

 always occasioned by the neglect and aggravation of 

 wounds and ulcers originating in mechanical injury, 

 particularly in the insinuating of pieces of slate, stone 

 or stiff wood between the claws of the hoof, or in the 

 wearing, splitting or bruising of the horn, and conse- 

 quent abrasion of the sensible foot, by walking for an 

 undue length of time upon flinty roads or other hard 

 and eroding surfaces. It is sometimes ascribed, in- 

 deed, to a moist state of the pastures, and sometimes 

 to contagious action ; but moisture merely predis- 

 poses to it by softening the hoof and diminishing its 

 power of resisting mechanical injury; and contagious 

 action can take place only when the disease is care- 

 lessly and cruelly allowed to proceed till it makes co- 

 pious discharges and putrid pus upon the ground, 

 and when the hoofs of some of the sound cattle are 

 60 worn or broken as to allow this pus to have access 

 to the absorbents of the foot. 



The ulcers of foul-in-the-foot usually occur about 

 the coronet, and extend under the hoof, and cause 

 much inflammatory action, very great pain, and more 

 or less separation of the hoof ; but they very generally 

 originate in uneven pressure upon the sole, and rise 

 upward from a crack between the claws, and are prin- 

 cipally or wholly confined to one side or claw of the 

 foot. A fetid purulent discharge proceeds from the 

 nlcers^ and a sinus may sometimes be discovered by 

 means of the probe to descend from the coronet be- 

 neath the hoof. The afiected animal is excessively 

 lame, and may possibly suffer such excessive pain as 

 to lose all appetite and become sickly and emaciated. 

 A common method with cow-doctors is to clean 

 the foot, to rub it backward and forward between 

 the claws with a cart-rope, and to dress it with a little 



butjT of antimony; but either this treatment or any- 

 thing similar is both coarse and inhuman. If the 

 disease have a very mild form, or be merely in the 

 initiatory stage, it may be readily cured Ijy cleaning, 

 fomentation, and rest, or also by bleeding from the 

 veins of iha coronet; if it have a medium character 

 between mild an virulent, it may be cured by clean- 

 ing, by cutting away the loose horn, by destroying 

 any fungous growth, and by applying a little butyr 

 of antimony ; and if it have a very bad form, or 

 have been long neglected, or have become very ag- 

 gravated, it wMll retjuire to be probed, lanced, or other- 

 wise dealt with according to good surgical practice, 

 and afterwards poulticed twice a day with linseed 

 meal, and frequently but lightly touched with butjr 

 of antimony. 



CORN BREAD. 



Mr. Editor: — In your interesting statistical arti- 

 cle on "Wheat-culture in the United States and 

 Canada," you say that " in Northern and Central 

 Europe, in Italy, France and the United States, brown 

 bread and corn bread are giving place to wheat bread, 

 wherever the former have long been eaten. ' Rye 

 and Indian' in New England, 'hoe-cake' 'pones' and 

 ' corn dodgers ' at the South and South-west, are be- 

 coming historical. Place good wheat bread and that 

 made of meal on the tables of the million, and the 

 old habit of eating meal bread, or meal dumplings 

 and porridge, will in a few years cease to exist." 



I do not know how it may be in Europe, but in 

 America that bread which is made of Indian corn 

 meal, or in which such meal is a large component, is 

 consumed at this time not only in larger quantity, but 

 in greater ratio with the population, than it ever was 

 before in these United States. A late traveler writing 

 from Mississippi, Louisiana and Texas, says that com 

 bread is the only bread eaten there, even by those 

 comparatively wealthy cotton-planters, who rejoice in 

 a net profit in their farming of at least $3000 a year; 

 yet on board the steamer that takes their cotton to 

 market, flour in barrels may be purchased at all 

 times. In New England, corn bread, in some of its 

 forms, is eaten by every class. Wheaten biscuit or 

 hot rolls are also common, but the wheaten loaf so 

 common in AVestern New York is rarely seen there. 

 In New York and the West, it is not the laboring 

 poor who eat the most Indian, or wheat and Indian, 

 or rye and Indian, for the reason that such bread re- 

 quires more skill to make it palatable than is required 

 to make palatable wheaten bread; and besides, much 

 of the corn meal sold at the grocers is made of com 

 injured in keeping, or it has at least lost its nutty 

 flavor by too much exposure to the warm, moist at- 

 mosphere. 



But in proof that the use of corn meal for bread 

 never was greater than at this time, our millers, one 

 and all, aver that grists of corn ground for the do- 

 mestic use of farmers, and their sales of Indian meal 

 to individuals and grocers, are at least four times 

 greater than they were a year or two ago. When 

 wheat flour is cheaper, less meal may be eaten ; but 

 methinks the use of that king of our cereals, Indian 

 corn, as food for the sovereign people, is to become 

 henceforth more and more common, until the women 



