EXOSTOSIS FROM EARTHY IMPREGNATION OF WATER. 331 
This reply was deemed satisfactory, as confirming my 
father’s opinion, and indicated the proper mode of checking 
the disease, viz., by a prophylactic measure. 
Since that date, the horses have drunk either rain-water, or 
water derived from a hill at a short distance from the town : 
and the beneficial effects of the change are manifested in the 
absence of any fresh cases. I think, the inference to be de- 
duced from these facts is clear ; viz., that the cause specified 
may occasionally, and probably often does , give rise to abnormal 
deposits of bone, not in the horse only, but in all domesticated 
animals. 
My researches and enquiries having failed to elicit any 
cases of a similar nature, may we not justly award to my 
father the merit of a discovery, the importance of which the 
members of the profession will be best able to estimate ? 
*** There is a disposition in the economy of the horse, at 
every age, and in particular during youthhood, to pour forth 
bony matter, and especially after any injury to the bone itself. 
And, in the case before us, this propensity of the system ap- 
pears to have been augmented by the fact of there being a 
superabundance of osseous or earthy material in the circula- 
tion ready to be poured out by the capillaries. The observa- 
tion is very apposite, and may prove, as it has proved, a 
useful hint; whereof to Mr. Dudfield, senior , undoubtedly 
belongs the credit. — Ed. Vet. 
