PHTHISIS, OR CONSUMPTION. 271 



When consumption begins to be confirmed, the animal loses flesh 

 with greater or less rapidity, and becomes weak. She eats with 

 almost undiminished appetite ; but the process of rumination re- 

 quiiing long, and new fatiguing action of the jaws, is slowly and 

 lazily performed. There is frequently a discharge from the mouth 

 or nostrils, or both ; at first colorless and without smell, but soon 

 becoming purulent, bloody, and fetid. Diarrhoea is present, and 

 that to a degree on which the most powerful astringents can make 

 no impression. Then, also, appears the inflammation of the tissue 

 beneath the skin. Whatever part of the animal is pressed upon, 

 she shrinks ; and if upon the loins, she moans with pain. The skin 

 becomes dry and rcaly ; and it strangely creaks as the animal crawls 

 staggering along. 



One circumstance is very remarkable and characteristic. The 

 mind and animal desires even of this comparatively dull and in- 

 sensible being are roused to an extreme degree of intensity. The 

 cow is, in many cases, almost continually in heat. When she is 

 impregnated, the oestrum does not go off"; and the consequence of 

 this continuance of excitement is that she is very subject to abor- 

 tion. 



One of the causes of consumption, almost unsuspected by many 

 breeders, and sufficiently guarded against only by a few — heredi- 

 tary predisposition — cannot be spoken of in too strong terms. It is 

 rare that the ofi'spring of a consumptive cow is not also consumptive. 

 If it be a heifer-calf, she may possibly live a little after her first calv- 

 ing, and then she usually sickens, and the disease proceeds with a 

 rapidity unknown in the mother. 



Change of climate is a frequent cause. Some dairymen are aware 

 how much depends on the cow being suited to the climate, or, 

 rather, being in her native climate. This explains the strange diff"er- 

 ence of opinion with regard to breeds. Almost every farmer is 

 partial to his own breed, and undervalues those of other districts, 

 and even those of his neighbors ; and, to a very great degree, he is 

 right. His cattle breathe their native air ; they are in a climate to 

 which, by a slow and most beneficial process, and extending through 

 many a generation back, their constitution has been in a manner 

 moulded ; and it is only after a long seasoning, and sometimes one 

 attended by no little peril, that the stranger becomes at home in a 

 foreign district, and so adapted and reconciled to the temperature, 

 and degree of dryness or moisture, and to the diff'erence of soil and 

 herbage, as to do quite as well, and yield as much and as good milk, 

 as in the vale in which she was reared. 



Experience teaches that a change of climate involving a material 

 difi'erence in temperature, or soil, or herbage, is frequently prejudicial ; 

 and that while there is derangement in every system, the respiratory 

 one seems .o suffer most, and a slow, insidious, yet fatal change is 



