10 
ACORN-POISONING. 
chievous practice, renders the feet brittle and weak, and is 
the predisposing cause of sandcrack. 
Mr. Greaves believes that these injuries result from the 
removal of an outside skin, and I also think that Mr. 
Fleming and Colonel Fitzwigram hold similar views concern- 
ing the existence of some sort of membranous layer or varnish 
on the outside of the wall. 
The difficulty of obtaining fully developed feet for exami- 
nation, which have not been rasped, makes me diffident in 
denying the existence of this structure. I may say, however, 
that I recognise the frog-band on the upper part of the wall, 
but have seen nothing more. 
I always explain the ill effects of rasping by the removal 
of the hard, dense external layers of horn, allowing excessive 
evaporation from and consequent dryness of the deeper parts. 
A man who removes the frog-band is either an ignoramus 
or a fool; and a man who rasps even below the clenches 
requires some information, unless he is a wretched being like 
myself, who has to bow to many whims and fancies for the 
sake of bread and cheese. 
ACORN-POISONING. 
By D. B. Howell, M.R.C.V.S., Beading. 
Within the last three years the attention of the profession 
has been called in the autumn to the presumed poisoning of 
cattle by eating acorns ; therefore, with your permission, I 
will make a few remarks upon the subject. In the first place, 
it must be remembered that acorns are used, we may say 
almost alone, for fattening purposes in many parts of the 
country ; therefore, to be so used must prove, after so many 
years' experience of their properties by agriculturalists, that 
there cannot be anything poisonous in their nature, or else 
such poison must have developed itself ages ago, and from 
the attendant mortality among stock acorns would have been 
discontinued ; consequently we must look for something else 
in these cases than poison. 
For my own part I am not sufficiently expert as a chemist 
to determine the difference in the proportions of tannin 
(which can be the only deleterious ingredient in its composi- 
tion, if any) in the green and in the mature fruit, neither can 
I determine why only the young animal is affected by it if it 
be a poison. 
