COLIC. 263 



ings,* with beans, pease-meal, and other stuff, which is called 

 strong meat, and a very liberal feed is given three times 

 a-day, or in turn millers' horses get the nose-bag put over 

 their heads as often as they are stopped for any time, in 

 delivering flour, &c. At night, notwithstanding the three 

 ample feeds, a pailful of boiled turnips, barley, and bran, is 

 given to each animal, besides an unlimited supply of hay. 

 It is not astonishing, then, if our superb Clydesdales are 

 destroyed in large numbers with attacks of spasmodic colic. 

 Irregularity of feeding is very injurious, especially if coupled 

 with over-work, and the days of the nose-bags were preceded 

 by many deaths which are far from rare now-a-days also, 

 and due to animals being fed well after many hours' starva- 

 tion and hard work. Exhaustion, coupled with the causes 

 just mentioned, induces colic. Not unfrequently an attack of 

 colic may be due to an animal being feverish or disturbed 

 from causes that are hidden and unknown. With such febrile 

 disturbance, the intestinal secretions are scanty, and consti- 

 pation produces the impaction of solid excrement in the 

 large intestine, which is soon attended with severe abdominal 

 pain. It is, therefore, not easy to define many causes which 

 may indirectly tend to produce spasmodic colic. The usually 

 mentioned causes are a drink of cold water, or exposure to 

 rain. These are often inert, or insufficient, and only help to 

 disturb the balance of function. 



The intestinal concretions described in the last chapter 

 are often the causes of relapsing forms of colic, which are 

 occasionally relieved by the evacuation of a calculus, or under 

 the influence of a purge by the fseces passing by the obstruc- 

 tion. Parasites in the intestine also induce colic. 



* English readers are informed that the sheeling is the thin sub- 

 stance containing the meal, and which by the last operation of grind- 

 ing, is separated into two parts, viz., meal and meal-seeds. 



