390 
AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST 
AN INTERESTING HORSE LAW-SUIT, 
A case was tried before Arbitrators in this 
place last week which presented some novel 
features and excited considerable interest. 
Mr. Emanuel Detrich, of Antrim township, 
owned a fine Cobham Horse a year ago, val¬ 
ued by all the witnesses at $1,000. In Au¬ 
gust, 1854, the horse was taken ill—said to 
be foundered, and either Mr. Detrich or one 
of his neighbors bled him to the tune of four 
gallons in two or three bleedings with very 
brief intervals. The depletion, however, did 
not relieve the horse sufficiently to satisfy 
the owner, and he sent for Dr. Shiffert, a 
veterinary surgeon, residing a few miles from 
this place, and he undertook to treat the ani¬ 
mal. He bled him, according to the testi¬ 
mony, some five gallons more the first day ; 
two gallons the next day, and one gallon the 
third day—making an aggregate of twelve 
gallons taken from the horse in four days. 
The horse died some eight or ten hours after 
the last bleeding, and the declaration of the 
plaintiff set forth that Detrich had charged 
Dr. Shiffert with having been paid by 
other parties, who were supposed to be in¬ 
terested in the destruction of the horse, to 
maltreat him, and that he had accordingly 
killed him intentionally. On this declaration 
in action for slander was based and damages 
claimed in the sum of $1,000. The defense 
put in the plea of “ not guilty, with leave to 
justify,” meaning that Mr. Detrich had not 
charged Dr. Shiffert with killing the horse 
maliciously, but that he had said the horse 
was killed by unskillful treatment and would 
justify the charge. 
The arbitrators not being skilled in the law, 
of course allowed the testimony to take the 
widest range within the bounds of reason, 
and some thirty or forty witnesses testified 
on the various points raised during the trial. 
The plaintiff’s attorneys urged that the trial 
should be confined to the single point in the 
declaration that of malicious mischief with 
which they alleged they had been charged ; 
and they denied the right of the defense to 
raise the question of unskillful treatment as 
it was not relevant to the issue. The de¬ 
fense urged that they denied having charged 
malicious malpractice upon the plaintiff, but 
they admitted having charged mal-practice 
and proposed to justify. The evidence was 
admitted, and the case covered nearly every 
important feature of veterinary practice. 
The plaintiff first offered testimony to sus¬ 
tain the slander set forth in the declaration, 
and the defense justified by proposing to 
prove that twelve gallons of blood had been 
taken from the horse in three or four days, 
and that death was caused by excessive de¬ 
pletion. Several persons who had opened 
the horse—all non-professional gentleman 
however—testified that the horse had little 
or no blood in him when opened—that the 
flesh was as free from blood as that of a 
butchered steer. This called up nearly all of 
our physicians to testify as to the amount of 
blood in such an animal. They all agreed 
that the best authorities on the subject war¬ 
ranted them in stating that such a horse, 
weighing nineteen hundred pounds, could 
not have had less than from forty-five to 
fiifty-five gallons of blood in him : and they 
also agreed that one-sixteenth of the whole 
weight of the animal, if in health, could be 
abstracted from him in blood before death 
would ensue from depletion, and that in 
cases of high inflammatory action, even more 
than that proportion might be taken without 
causing death. They stated that a man of 
average weight had about three and a half 
gallons of blood in him, and that animals 
generally had about the same proportion ac¬ 
cording to their weight ; but they agreed 
that there could be no rule as to the amount 
of bleeding in any particular disease, as 
where bleeding is required they must contin¬ 
ue until the desired effect is produced, and 
different quantities will produce that in dif¬ 
ferent patients. After a hearing of two days 
an award was made in favor of the defendent. 
The arbitrators in the case were Messrs. 
Grove, Trostle and McClure ; the attorneys 
were Messrs. Robinson and Kennedy for 
plaintiff, and Messrs. Nill, Reilly, Crooks, 
Sharp, and Rankin, for defendant. We learn 
that an appeal has been taken and the case 
will accordingly now be tried again in Court 
—just where it should have been tried at 
first .—Repository and Whig. 
ELIES. 
Tempus fugit —or, as the Latin scholar 
translated it, “A time for flies.” Those lit¬ 
tle pests of social comfort are now upon us 
in swarms. They come up, like the frogs 
of Egypt, into our houses, and into our bed¬ 
chambers, and into our ovens, and into our 
kneading-troughs. The very air is full of 
them, and they multiply with astonishing 
rapidity. In the morning, they disturb our 
slumbers by crawling up our nostrils, or 
whizzing and buzzing and fussing in our 
ears. At meal times, they must taste every 
dish that we do, but their prelibations would 
be forgiven, if their bodies were not left, too 
frequently, as a token of their greediness. 
But let us not fret too strongly against 
even this pest. It is a well known fact that 
the flies always seek in greater numbers, 
the irritable and fretful. They have a cu¬ 
rious instinct in that particular. The more 
we notice their irritations, and the more 
peevish we are in driving them off, the more 
numerous are the throngs around us. Let 
us not fret then. Nothing was made in vain, 
and even flies answer some important part 
in the economy of the world. We can cer¬ 
tainly see that they were intended as trials 
to our patience, and therefore serve a useful 
purpose in the formation of character. The 
more trifling the cause that calls forth our 
irritability, the more deleterious its effect on 
our depositions. To overcome this propen¬ 
sity to fretfulness, and to permit patience to 
have her perfect work, may be one benefit to 
be derived from the plague of flies. He who 
rules his spirit in little things will be the 
better prepared for the greater and more im¬ 
portant contests of life. 
Elies act an important part in our social 
condition. They consume in and around 
the house, the extra moisture which might 
otherwise contaminate the air. They seldom 
touch pure water. The fluids they feed 
upon are of animal or vegetable origin, 
which, by mingling with the water, vitiate 
the air in a dwelling. In the larva or mag¬ 
got state, they are the great scavengers of 
nature, and soon consume that which would 
otherwise poison the air, and create sickness. 
A small number of flies and other insects is 
an indubitable sign of a sickly season. 
When flies or other animals of the like 
class become too numerous, they become 
the prey of other animals in turn, the whole 
apparent object of whose creation is to feed 
on the insects and keep their numbers within 
the limits of usefulness. There is, in all 
the arrangements of the Creator, this com¬ 
pensation of purpose in the existence of all 
animals, all being in subserviency to the 
wellbeing of man on this earth, and all in¬ 
tending to point out to him that this world is 
only a stage of trial. 
Did you ever, fretful reader, examine a 
fly through a large microscope 1 That sight 
ought to cure you of your loathing and 
irritability, and teach you how beautiful are 
all the works of God, and how wonderfully 
adapted to the purposes designed. Even 
the despised fly is clothed with beauty—even 
this epliemerial pest, so much abhorred, is 
dressed in gay robes of gauze and gold which 
art would in vain attempt to imitate. It is 
a perfect wonder—its contrivances for suc¬ 
tion—its eyes immovable, eyes so contrived 
with numerous distinct lenses as to receive 
impressions from all directions without 
change of place ; the nicely balanced, gauze- 
form wings, with the little mallet that strikes 
upon them to produce the buzzing noise, (for 
no insect has a voice, or makes any sound 
through the throat,)—the power of exhaust¬ 
ing the air possessed by the mechanism of 
the bottom of the foot, by which the fly can 
suspend itself from the ceiling and thus over¬ 
come gravity—all these repay the investiga¬ 
tor into the construction of the common fly, 
and manifest the wisdom of the Creator.— 
Hartford Courant. 
Origin of Tea. —The Chinese have the 
following tradition, relating to the origin of 
tea: Darina, a very religious prince, and 
son of an Indian king, came into China 
about the year 519, purely to promulgate his 
religion ; and, with the hope of alluring oth¬ 
ers to virtue, by his example, pursued a life 
of unvaried mortification and penance, eat¬ 
ing only vegetables, and spending most of 
his time unsheltered by any dwelling, in the 
exercise of prayer and devotion. Aftercon- 
tinuing this life for some years, he became 
worn out with fatigue, and at length closed 
his eyes, and fell asleep against his will; 
but, on awaking, such was his remorse and 
grief for having broken his vow, that, in or¬ 
der to prevent a relapse, he cut off his eye¬ 
lids, as being the instruments of his crime, 
and threw them on the ground. Returning 
to the same spot, on the ensuing day, he 
found them changed into two shrubs, now 
known by the name of Tea. Darma, eating 
some of the leaves, felt such vigor imparted 
to his mind, that his meditations became 
more exalted, and the lethargy which had 
previously overpowered him entirely disap¬ 
peared. He acquainted his disciples with 
the wonderful properties of the shrubs, and 
in time the use of them became universal. 
The California Condor. —The high moun¬ 
tains of California are frequented by a spe¬ 
cies of condor which, although somewhat in¬ 
ferior in size to the condor of the Andes, is 
probably the largest bird to be found within 
the confines of the Golden State. A full 
grown California condor measures upward 
of thirteen feet from tip to tip of its wings, 
and when in its favorite element, the air, is 
as graceful and majestic as any bird in the 
world. They make their homes upon the 
ledges of lofty rocks, or in the old deserted 
nests of hawks and eagles, upon the upper 
branches of lofty trees. Their eggs are 
each about twelve ounces in weight, and are 
said to be excellent eating. The barrels of 
the wing-feathers of the condor are about 
four inches long and three-eights of an inch 
in diameter, and are used by the inhabitants 
of Northern Mexico to keep gold dust in. 
Tomato Preserves. —Take the round yel¬ 
low variety as soon as ripe, scald and peel ; 
then to seven pounds of tomatoes add seven 
pounds of white sugar, and let them stand 
over night. Take the tomatoes out of the 
sugar and boil the syrup, removing the scum. 
Put in the tomatoes and boil gently fifteen or 
twenty minutes ; remove the fruit again, and 
boil until the syrup thickens. On cooling, 
put the fruit into jars and pour the syrup 
over it, and add a few pieces of lemon to 
each jar, and you will have something to 
please the taste of the most fastidious. 
Why did Job always sleep cold ? Because 
he had miserable comforters . 
