1^ THE NATURE AND TREATMENT OP 



Concord in this State, without mentioning other cases, which 

 of late have been chronicled in our agricultural periodicals. 



It occasionally appears as an insolated evil ; an Alderny 

 cow the property of Mr. Burnet of Southboro, has in the 

 course of three years, aborted four times ; at the time of 

 writing this article my attention is called to her, I recommend 

 that she shall be spayed ; the owner consents, and of course she 

 will, hereafter, become a more useful animal in supporting 

 other offspring than her own. I call this an isolated case, 

 because Mr. B., informs me that his other cows have not 

 aborted. She inherits a tendency to abort. 



A theory has been broached, by some writer that, severe 

 winters succeeded by warm springs, hilly pasturage, the 

 practice of allowing young stock, and one and two-years-old 

 bulls to run with the breeding cows, is likely to end in abortion. 

 This is sheer nonsence, and is not entitled to the least considera- 

 tion ; and relying on the intelligence of my readers, I refrain 

 from offering any argument in view of controverting evident 

 absurdities. 



The fact is, some cows will abort, no matter what may be 

 the nature of the pasturage, or the condition of the atmosphere, 

 and, so will women miscarry occasonally, in spite of their own 

 precautions and the advice of their physicians to prevent it. 



It is evident therefore, that there exists in the animal 

 economy of some subjects, peculiarities of constitution termed 

 idiocyncracies, which under certain circumstances, and on the 

 application of the cause, — indirect, — develop the latent path- 

 ological fire, and thus they abort. 



"When abortion prevails among a whole herd of cows, on one 

 man's farm, I should consider it as enzootic, arising spontane- 

 ously, afterwards propagated by infection or, by sympathetic 

 influence; Youatt gives a quotation whicli favors these views. 

 " In the Leipsic Agricultural Gazette^ is is stated, that, * by an 

 unheard-of fatality, the abortion of cows in that district was 

 almost general, and that after the most anxious search, no 

 assignable cause for it could be discovered, nor would any 

 medicine or medical treatment arrest the plague.' " 



