AMERICAN AGRICULTURIST. 
179 
CATTLE DISEASE IN OHIO- 
[The following communication, for some reason, failed 
to reach us in time for either the June or July numbers. 
Ed.] 
To theEditor of the American Agriculturist. 
In consequence of the appearance ol a severe 
anti fatal disease among cattle in some parts of 
Portage County, Ohio, the past Winter, the Farm¬ 
ers’ Association of Edinburg appointed the under¬ 
signed a Committee to investigate the subject, 
and ascertain, if possible, the nature, cause, and 
cure of this malady. The report of this Commit¬ 
tee we wish to forward for publication in the 
American Agriculturist, together with a resolution 
adopted by the Association at the close of an in¬ 
structive discussion upon the adoption of the re¬ 
port. 
REPORT. 
The disease is not caused by freezing, neither 
is it what has been called hoof-ail, foot-rot or 
fouls. Its first symptoms seem to be a dead¬ 
ness of the end erf the tail, extending upwards, 
-ill, in some cases, the flesh separates from the 
rone and falls off'. About the same time there 
us a purple appearance just at the edge of the hair 
-above the hoof. It then commences swelling, be¬ 
comes feverish, extending upwards to the ancle, 
•and in some instances causing a separation of the 
coffin bone from the pastern joint. The lame¬ 
ness is confined entirely to the hind feet. The 
blood is pale and thin, and in most cases, the ani- 
imal retains a good appetite till near the last. 
The cause we apprehend to be feeding on hay 
containing ergot, (a parasite fungus growing with¬ 
in the glumes of various grasses,) in considerable 
quantity. We arrive at this conclusion from the 
fact, that the hay fed by an individual who lost a 
large number of cows, contained much of this ar¬ 
ticle, and also the person from whom he pur¬ 
chased the hay, lost cattle from the same disease ; 
and in both instances, cattle fed on other hay, 
were not affected. 
In every well-marked case of this disease, it 
has been ascertained that the hay on which the 
animal was fed contained the ergot. The hay in 
which the ergot was found the most, was the 
kind called June or Spur Grass, growing in old 
meadows, where the soil is rich, and the growth 
rank. The severe frost on the 31st of May, 1856, 
is supposed by some to have been the cause of 
the disease in the grass, by destroying the vitali¬ 
ty of the seed before it arrived at perfection ; 
■while, by others it is attributed to extreme warm 
growing weather, in June, causing an overflow 
of sap. 
Although we consider the whole subject in¬ 
volved in much obscurity and uncertainty, and 
.requiring further investigation, yet we are satis¬ 
fied the best manner of treating the disease, is 
immediate resort to cauteration, and a change of 
diet, wheieby an increase of animal heat and vi¬ 
tality may be obtained, at the same time making 
an application of suitable remedies to the affected 
parts. First, by cutting off the toes until they 
bleed, and blue vitriol moderately applied to the 
affected parts has been found beneficial in sev¬ 
eral instanees. A free use of salt and charcoal, 
in various ways, is undoubtedly a good preven¬ 
tive; and a careful examination of the hay or 
grass on which the stock is fed is indispensable. 
If found in hay, it may be removed by threshing 
or trampling. Of the specific nature and proper¬ 
ties of ergot, in hay, or whether it is identi¬ 
cal with that of rye, we are not well informed. 
The immediate effects of the latter, in large do¬ 
ses, is well known ; but it has no affinity to the 
ordinary known effects of vegetable poisons. 
What affect would be produced by its gradual and 
continued use, we are not in possession of suffi¬ 
cient information to warrant us in speaking posi¬ 
tively; but we do suppose, after a careful exami¬ 
nation, that it operates on the blood of the ani¬ 
mal, and unless immediate remedies are applied, 
it proves fatal. 
P. Barron, M. D., J. Y. Pearson, 
R. M. Hart, Esq., Jonas Bond, 
CommiUecr- 
The following resolution was unanimously 
adopted: 
Resolved, Inasmuch as the evidence adduced 
is conclusive, that ergot in hay is the cause of 
this disease, yet the Association cannot decide 
that it is the real cause of a poison being intro¬ 
duced into the system, owing to our inabitity to 
analyze this substance ; therefore, we desire to 
ask the Editors of our Agricultural papers for 
more information, and to obtain the chemical 
analysis of ergot. 
Edinburgh, Portage Co., O., May, 1857. 
For the American Agriculturist. 
FROM OUR WATERLOO CORRESPONDENT. 
Guano and Concentrated Manures. —It is 
gratifying to notice among the advertisements 
in the Agriculturist so many competitors in the 
sale of concentrated manures ; the more espe¬ 
cially as the manufacture of tafeu from city night- 
soil, and the ammoniated powder which Mynheer 
Schwager makes at that little barren sea island 
from the defunct animals of Gotham, does work 
great good to the propriety and health of the city, 
while it returns to the vegetable kingdom a part 
of those indispensable elements, the whole of 
which has so long been wasted and lost! When 
such men vend only the unadulterated article, 
they are the true benefactors of their race. But 
why does M. Schwager set the price of his un¬ 
tried amendment above that of Peruvian guano, 
even if the latter does hold its ammonia by a 
more volatile tenor than does his animal fertil¬ 
izer, as he intimates, for it is only in the state of 
a carbonate that ammonia can perform its true 
office in the soil, as the truly practical Boussin- 
gault tells us that the sulphate of ammonia is al¬ 
ways changed to a carbonate in the soil before it 
becomes available to plants 1 
More Nitrogen. —As the sailor said, “ brandy 
was the best thing, and more hrandy the next 
best.” The same may be said with much better 
reason of nitrogen. How often we hear the 
farmers say, “ the soil cannot be made too rich 
for corn ;” nor can it for most other cereal or 
herbaceous crops after decomposition has added 
hydrogen to the nitrogen, and formed the carbon¬ 
ate of ammonia, and that salt has had time to 
prepare and leaven the whole lump au fait to veg¬ 
etable nutrition. In a virgin soil, the whole re¬ 
cumbent surface is thus prepared by Nature’s 
hand, the carbonic acid of decaying vegetables 
holding the volatile ammonia ready to perform its 
office as soon as the surface is stirred up and 
planted. On such a soil, that delicate feeder, 
wheat, finds its true nutriment, and attains per¬ 
fection. Hence, let every farmer or gardener 
take a hint from Nature, and plant his coarse 
feeders, corn, oats, roots—potatoes sometimes ex¬ 
cepted—on land treated with crude unfermented 
manures, and the more delicate feeders on the 
same soil the next year, either without extra ma¬ 
nure, or with liquid or well-rotted manure. No 
man knows until he tries it, how much ammonia 
may be saved by keeping his manure undercover, 
and applying it in a liquid state, either to a grass- 
plot or hoed crops; in this way, hen dung, the 
liquid from the privy, or a little dissolved guano 
that is rich in ammonia, may be made the substi¬ 
tute for many loads of ordinary long-exposed sta¬ 
ble manure. Let every gardener try i . 
Weeds a Blessing. —When I see a crop strug¬ 
gling with sterility instead of being choked with 
weeds, I feel as the doctor does when called to a 
patient in the cold stage, who is without stamina 
enough to raise a fever. In ever-blessed alluvial 
Western New-York, I have seen many a field and 
garden crop choked with weeds, which only made 
me more in love with all-provident Nature, in 
proportion as I grew sick of lazy, shiftless, igno¬ 
rant man. But on the drift formations at Brook¬ 
lyn and Staten Island, I have seen garden crops 
struggling in piteous, weedless sterility ; insolu 
ble silex seemed to reign triumphant in default o 
every mineral or vegetable alkali, in the shape of 
potash or ammonia ; but the mercenary gardener 
said to me with some truth, that “ the beets were 
sweeter for being so ve>"" small.” Where weeds 
grow there is positive evidence that there is life 
in the soil, that Nature is true to her own, and 
that man’s improvidence alone creates a vacuum. 
If he will only give a substitute for her organizing 
weeds, she will most generously second his 
efforts; but“unless he returns somefhing to her 
soil as a quid pro quo for the crop he removes, it 
soon reaches that state of sterility where the 
weeds, her panacea for a neglected soil, cannot 
find sustenance, and the desertrhas begun. 
Grass the Greatest of Blessings to Agri¬ 
culture.— I once looked upon an extended fence¬ 
less plain overgrown with May weed (Anlhemas 
Catula of Zinn), at the South, which once pro¬ 
duced luxuriant crops of cotton. When I asked 
why these plains had not been seeded to grass 
before the fences were gone or removed, the re¬ 
ply was, “ grass would not grow in this sun- 
stricken region ” Clover, the largest rooted of all, 
grew well in Fall and Winter, but the first o 
second Summer gave it its quietus. On no large 
Southern plantation have I ever been so impressed 
with the evidences of domestic comfort as on the 
smallest grass-growing farm in Western New- 
York, even in those elevated regions where In¬ 
dian corn is reduced to that early-stunted variety 
which yields barely enough to fat the pork and 
make the Johnny-cake of the farmer’s family ; for 
here is clover-scented butter, fine-creamed cheese, 
raised , not greasy wheaten biscuit, and every other 
substantial article of food the epicure might envy, 
served up with a neatness which smacks of no 
“ help.” Here are fat, sleek cattle, and laughing 
cows, with white clover pasture, knee-deep in 
mid-Summer, and the best shelter, and sweet 
clover and Timothy hay and oats in Winter. 
How different is all this where white clover 
never shows its blossoms, and Timothy, oi 
even red clover, can hardly be coaxed into 
a respectable growth ; with no herbaceous 
substitute but the blades of the gross variety 
of Indian Corn, whose stalks are ligneous and 
inedible. In the hog and hominy country 
it is still worse, fog there the hogs eat up all 
the corn, and the negroes all the hogs, while 
the poor mule is only enabled to live through the 
cold sleety winter, by his great powers of endur¬ 
ance, and his capacity for long suffering. 
Oceanic Manures. —From the south shore ol 
Long Island to the Carolinas, the rockless, sandy 
coast is unfavorable to the growth of marine vege¬ 
tables, but farther east and north, the rock-bound 
headlands around the Bay of Narraganset send to 
the narrow beaches after every eastern gale, a 
ripe crop of ribbon and rock-weed, full of mineral 
and animal matter, in the form of Crustacea, zoo¬ 
phytes and molusca, both living and dead. Men¬ 
haden fish is also a great manuring crop If 
leaner fish afford more nitrogen, the greater num¬ 
ber of menhaden to be taken makes up for the ex¬ 
cess of carbonaceous matter they contain, and 
I this is of economical, if not of manureal value. 
Waterloo, N. Y S. W 
