306 THE PRESENT EPIDEMIC AMONG CATTLE, See. 
udder in one or more quarters was affected, the milk has re- 
turned also. None have been rendered impervious to the secretion 
or excretion. 
22d. Cows and sheep during gestation or after parturition 
have not been exempted. It has gone through its usual course. 
23d. Yes : in the mare, about the seventh day after the animal 
has had the disease the foal is aborted dead. No physic has 
been given to the mares, nor have the animals been bled. 
24th. I have not seen any. 
25th. I have not seen any before the third or fourth day. 
26th. I am not decided in my opinion as to this point. 
27th. Yes, it has. 
28th. I have not seen any. 
2.9th. In a fair disposition to improve. In both forms of the 
disease. 
30th. On this question I shall make a few remarks : — The 
summer 1840, from the latter end of February to October, was 
very dry. As soon as the rain set in, which it did about the 
beginning of October, the influenza among horses developed itself, 
although but a few solitary cases had occurred in the interim since 
the year 1836. The prevailing wind was northerly and easterly : 
its course was not regular, but in a varied direction. Miles apart 
some intervening stable remaining free : in some stables it con- 
fined its influence to one or two horses ; in others it ran through 
the whole. It is remarkable that, as soon as the snow mantled 
the ground, on reference to my statistical record, not a single fresh 
case occurred, but only from those stables that had been infested 
with the disease beforehand. From its abruptly ceasing, a fair 
conclusion may be drawn that the empoisoned emanation, which 
was capable of exerting its influence on the animal frame, was 
prevented from commingling with the atmosphere, and the means 
of infection suspended, and became more concentrated. Now 
comes the fact, extraordinary as it may appear, that as soon as 
the snow set in, horses were exempted, and, for the first time in 
my locality, it began to exert its infectious agency on cattle, 
sheep, and swine, as the thaw began, and is now on the increase. 
Now, whether the poison, from being imprisoned by the snow, 
became more malignant, or acquired any new component consti- 
tuency, cannot be determined (should such poison be an evolu- 
tion from the earth) ; for, as soon as the thaw commenced, and it 
became free, cattle, sheep, and swine were within two or three 
days attacked. 
31st. I have here to note another singular incident (but it 
must be borne in mind that I am confining myself to my own 
locality, equidistantly seven miles, as near as I can imagine, from 
