Proceedings of the Farmers' Club. 473 



of labor and plenty, and attract around them the poor, the desti- 

 tute, who would die in the dens and hovels of European cities 

 rather than pitch their tents in what often seems to deserve the 

 title of wilderness. 



Your live stock is dying, its reproduction is materially checked 

 where it is of highest value, because nearer your great markets; 

 and I have already seen enough to convince me of one iiict, viz: the 

 casting of hoofs and fracture of bones, the withering and destruc- 

 tion of calves yet unborn, the wasting and drooping of flocks which 

 have attained maturity, are one and all due to ignorance of the 

 conditions necessary to the cultivation of wholesome grasses. You 

 may think this strange, but the diseases of animals teach us some 

 very remarkable, and, at first sight, apparently conflicting truths. 

 I can show you soils, equaled by none others in our country, 

 farmed by the ablest men with skill and judgment, and on which 

 enormous crops of roots and cereals are annually raised. 



For some years all seems to prosper, when suddenly cattle in 

 preparation for our Christmas markets — cattle worth thirty pounds 

 and forty pounds a head — drop dead one by one, and by twos and 

 threes, of diseases, which, when once manifest, are incurable. How 

 tantalizing to have been liberal with manures, unsparing in labor, 

 and unremitting in attention, and then to see the finest stock in the 

 world destroyed as efiectually as if some miscreant maliciously 

 killed it, and at the same time rendered it totally unfit for human 

 consumption. The secret of so much waste and so much loss is 

 found in the peculiar nature of food, of our root crops especially, 

 raised on good soil, and used to the exclusion of other foods for 

 the feeding of animals. 



Nature has intended that Ave should supply the systems of men 

 and animals generally with a definite combination of materials 

 suited to their wants, and in excess of their requirements. It is 

 usually easy to indicate, on the appearance of such diseases as I am 

 speaking of, on the appearance of anthrax, of apoplexy, of what 

 farmers have called shoots of blood, how they may be prevented. 

 Overlook, however, one or two important facts which the veterina- 

 rian, the chemist, the comparative pathologist can teach you, and 

 the diseases rage year after year, to the complete destruction of 

 some of the richest tracts of land. Is it not true, therefore, that 

 for want of some veterinary knowledge we find poverty and want 

 where there might be abundance and riches? The chief indigenous 

 diseases of farm animals in the United Kingdom are due to the 



