THE DISEASES OF CATTLE 303 



the hair where they are seen to scratch and pull off a 

 flake of it. By placing the lock of hair under an ordinary 

 glass, such as almost every Western man has handy, and 

 examining it closely at the roots, the mites, if there are 

 any, will readily be discovered, very much alive. 



In mange scurfy scale-like stuff comes away with the 

 hair, which. is but the dead tissue where the mites have 

 burrowed in the skin and the scab which forms sticks 

 to the roots of the hair. The disease among horses 

 is much the same in all its symptoms and can be simi- 

 larly handled. 



A few years ago in northern New Mexico mange ob- 

 tained a footing and spread among the range horses 

 until with a very hard winter thousands of horses died. 

 Probably many of them would have died anyhow but any 

 one seeing a bunch of the horses, some of them as bare 

 of hair as a picked chicken, with great raw places on 

 their necks and shoulders where they scratched on the 

 rocks and trees, had little doubt that mange did much 

 to hasten the coming of the end. A strenuous cam- 

 paign of dipping the next season carried on by the ter- 

 ritorial authorities stopped the spread of the disease 

 and, so far as can be seen today, completely eradi- 

 cated it. 



