670 Kidd V. Royal Agricultural Society of England. 
it, in wliicli it will be a question for you to consider whether it 
does. It asserts that Mr. Wells's cattle, immediately after eating 
the cake, were seized with very bad symptoms, and no doubt 
that was the fact. What does that amount to — would you think 
that what they are asserting there amounts to this, that the cattle 
fell ill, and one of them died, owing to something that was a 
deleterious matter in the linseed or not? If you think it 
amounts to stating that Mr. Kidd manufactured and sold linseed- 
cake which contained deleterious matter, and so killed his cattle 
and made them ill, that is a serious imputation, and requires 
justification to a certain extent. If, on the other hand, you think 
that a man reading all this would only believe that it amounted 
to this, that the Plaintiff sold an inferior dirty linseed which was 
given to Mr. Wells's cattle, who immediately afterwards had bad 
symptoms ; that would be true enough, because it is quite clear 
that there were bad symptoms, and Mr. Wells believed that they 
were occasioned by the linseed-cake. That is one of the things 
upon which you have had so much evidence given before you. 
The question is, whether that was the meaning of the libel at 
the time. Upon that you have to carry in your minds the 
question whether the justification is proved so as to go so far as 
to ascertain that the death of the cow and the illness of the 
cattle really followed from some deleterious ingredient contained 
in the linseed-cake. 
Now one side has contended, and brought evidence before you 
to show, that the linseed-cake being given to the cattle in a feed 
of 7 lbs., when they had been some days without it, and 6 lbs. to 
the cows at the farm, and a smaller quantity, 4^ lbs., to the 
beasts that were at Airmyn Pastures, they all fell ill ; the evi- 
dence being that the beasts that had the most seemed to fall ill 
most. I think both sides seem to be agreed upon that; and 
it is a thing that one would hardly doubt if any one were to go 
against it — that the fact of so many cattle, immediately after 
the giving of the linseed-cake, very much in proportion to the 
quantity of the linseed which was given to them, would lead to 
the conclusion that that illness was connected with the cattle 
having taken linseed-cake. But, then, the controversy upon that 
part of the matter — and it is the great one — is, does the fact 
that the cattle were all taken ill in this way satisfy you that there 
was some deleterious ingredient in this linseed-cake? There is 
another part of the evidence which I shall have to come to, as to 
the manufacture of the cake, which bears upon this ; but still you 
will have to consider this. The Plaintiff's scientific Witnesses 
say this is the only case in which cattle have been affected ; but 
then it is clear that the cows were all taken ill from something. 
I think the Defendant's Veterinary Surgeons also agree in this— 
