292 Repoi't on the Health of Animals of the Farm. 
by myself and assistants. The most important have been cases 
of poisoning in the domesticated animals ; and my experience 
leads me to the conclusion that both foxes and hounds are being 
destroyed more frequently than is generally supposed — the 
agent employed being occasionally arsenic, but in the majority 
of instances strychnia. That the latter agent is more commonly 
resorted to than any other for the destruction of animal life is to be 
accounted for, I believe, by the circumstance that strychnia — in 
the form of the so-called Vermin Killers — can be purchased with 
greater facility than any other poison. During the fifteen years 
I have held the Professorship of Chemistry in the Royal Veteri- 
nary College, I have investigated between five hundred and six 
hundred cases of actual poisoning or supposed poisoning in the 
lower animals ; and in almost every instance in which I have 
detected strychnia in a dog or a fox, I have found the remains of 
a rabbit, hare, rat, or pheasant or other bird, in the animal's 
stomach ; such rabbit, &c., having doubtless been charged with 
the poison and then used as a bait. I have likewise conducted, 
during the past year, many analyses of the viscera of cattle and 
sheep in which lead has been found ; and, from inquiries made, 
it would appear that all of them have been cases of malicious 
or wilful poisoning — probably with acetate (sugar) of lead- — for 
no evidence could be gained of the animals having had access to 
paint, water contaminated with lead, bullet-spray from rifle-butts, 
or to any of the other well-known accidental sources of lead- 
poisoning. I have likewise to record a case of the poisoning- 
of two cows through drinking water from a brook which was 
polluted by drainage from a gas-work in the neighbourhood of 
London. The water, on being analysed, was found to be highly, 
charged with sulphide of calcium, an exceedingly powerful irri- 
tant. As is well known, lime is used to remove the sulphu- 
retted hydrogen from coal-gas ; and in performing this office it 
becomes transformed into sulphide of calcium. After a certain 
time the purifier is discharged of its contents, which are allowed 
to remain exposed to the air in the yards of gas-works. Rain 
falling on them dissolves the sulphide of calcium ; and, in the 
case now cited, the solution formed found its way into >the brook. 
" In the manufacture of sulphate of ammonia from gas-liquor, 
for manurial purposes, large volumes of highly noxious sul- 
phuretted hydrogen gas are, in badly-arranged works, vomited 
into the atmosphere, which is not only prejudicial to sur- 
rounding vegetation, but is also prejudicial to the health of, and 
even fatal to, animals. In a recent inquiry in which I was 
professionally engaged, a varnish-maker, his family, and hisi 
horses, dogs, and fowls, had been living in Kent in perfect health 
for twenty years. About three years ago a sulphate of ammonia. 
