Lung Plague and Cholera. 153 



in Europe and America has been much restricted, re- 

 duced, or prohibited, by confinement, or housing, is no- 

 torious and obvious to all who choose to observe it. 



Probably the reduction in the natural activity of cows 

 from greatly reducing their out-door exercise in many 

 thousands of cases, both in Europe and America, and 

 nearly prohibiting out-door activity of many more thou- 

 sands of cows on both continents, has reduced the natural 

 activity of these great numbers of cows on both continents, 

 to as much as 70 per cent less than their natural degree 

 and extent of out-door exercise. 



The extent of breathing, beyond the inactive minimum, 

 is increased according to the natural extent of out-door 

 exercise ; the natural extent of breathing being that degree 

 which is induced in gathering food by regular grazing. 

 So that when this multitude of cows are confined and fed 

 in stalls, or in small pens, their breathing is reduced to the 

 inactive minimum ; which is probably 35 or 40 per cent 

 less than the healthy and natural extent. In this way, the 

 natural quantity of oxygen in the blood is reduced to about 

 40 per cent below the necessary and healthful extent of 

 oxygenated and completed blood. 



That millions of hogs,* particularly in the extensive corn 

 regions of the West, have had their muscle reduced, and 

 their fat, and resulting 2«activity correspondingly increased, 

 is a very evident and well-known fact in the leading 

 States west of Pennsylvania. The proportion of fat in 

 millions of western bred hogs has been so much increased 

 within twenty-five years, that their muscle and bone have 

 been reduced to a mere minimum ; their reduced activity 

 being carried so far, that vast numbers of them pass from 

 three-fourths to nine-tenths of their lives, after the first 

 three months, in the slow-breathingstate of inactive repose. 



* See reduction of muscle and food-value in Cattle and Swine, Chapter 

 XVII. 



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