27C THE NATURE AND TREATMENT OF 



suffers, perhaps located either in the brain, spinal marrow, liver, 

 or pancreas, entirely unsuspected, may progress to a fatal ter- 

 mination, while an uneducated cow-leech is amusing himself 

 by taking unwarrantable liberties with the uncomplaining 

 animal's tail. I am often told that animals after being thus 

 operated on get well. Very likely. Some animals will en- 

 dure the most cruel torture, and I once saw a cow in apparent 

 health who a fortnight previous drank a pint of white paint. 

 Such cases I look upon as nothing more nor less than lucky 

 escapes. I shall close this article by introducing a selection 

 from " Youatt on Cattle." 



Mr. Youatt, when treating of palsy, thus alludes to tail-ill, 

 or tail-slip : " In many parts of the kingdom, palsy is traced 

 to a most ridiculous cause. The original evil is said to be in 

 the tail ; and all maladies of this kind, involving the partial or 

 total loss of motion in the hind limbs of the animal, are classed 

 under the name of tail-ill, or tail-slip. Our friend, Mr. Dick, 

 of Edinburgh, has taken up this subject in a very interesting 

 point of view, in the fourteenth number of the Journal of Ag- 

 riculture ; and the public are much indebted to him for dis- 

 pelling a false, injurious, and cruel superstition. The farmer 

 and the cow-leech believe that the mischief passes along the 

 cow's tail to the back, and that it is on account of something 

 wrong in the tail that she loses the use of her legs ; and then 

 some set to work and cut the cow's tail off, while others, less 

 cruel or more scientific, make an incision into the under sur- 

 face, and allow the wound to bleed freely, and then fill it up 

 with a mixture of tar and salt, and we know not what. 



"... Mr. Dick, with a kind consideration for which 

 he deserves much credit, condescends to reason the case with 

 these foolish people ; and what he says is so much to the pur- 

 pose, that we cannot refrain from introducing it here : ' The 

 disease, in ordinary cases, is said to consist in a softening about 

 the extremity of the tail, and is to be distinguished by the 

 point of the tail being easily doubled back upon itself, and hav- 

 ing, at this doubling, a soft and rather crepitating kind of feel. 

 But what is the real state of the case ? The tail is lengthened out 



