ON llED-WATKll IN CATTLE. 
:324 
sweet, and stimulating; or a change from a poor to a luxuriant 
pasture, even in the same neighbourhood. The causes of red-wa¬ 
ter are so general and well known among graziers in the West 
Riding of Yorkshire that several with whom I am acquainted, 
taught by experience invariably and too fatally for them, look for, 
and have, innumerable cases during long droughts, or prior to or 
immediately after their cessation. 
Red-water, being so prevalent in hot and dry weather, may be 
accounted for by the fact of the liver being employed in removing 
from the system the superfluous carbon. This has caused it to be 
considered in some measure subsidiary to the lungs, in which we 
know the same process takes place, the air which enters them 
returning loaded with carbonic acid. 
Many circumstances tend to strengthen this idea. The heat of 
the body depends on the formation of carbonic acid: but if the 
external heat is sufficient, there is less necessity for internal heat; 
less carbonic acid is formed; more carbon is left to be got rid of 
by the liver; the bile becomes acrid, and the liver deranged. 
Th'e fact of cattle being subject to red-water prior to or imme¬ 
diately after a cessation of dry weather, is not stated on my own 
authority alone, although my own practice and observation have 
confirmed it, but also on that of several graziers, whom I know to 
be accurate observers, and who have stated, that if drought had ex¬ 
isted for some length of time without red-water making its appear¬ 
ance amongst their herds, its breaking out was a certain precursor 
of and soon followed by a change. It is also a well authenticated 
lact, that the cattle which they are in the annual practice of pur¬ 
chasing in the spring and early part of summer, at the different 
fairs on the Avestern coast of Lancashire, where the land is of a 
peaty and marshy nature, are sure to be affected with red-water 
almost immediately after their arrival at their destination ; while, 
on the other hand, if, at the same time, others are brought from 
the immediate neighbourhood, or from land similar to their own, 
and which have been bred or reared there, these cattle are, gene¬ 
rally speaking, rarely affected by the change. I have known in¬ 
stances without number in which cattle that have been bred or long 
kept upon the mosses, of which there is no lack in this county, 
becoming affected with this disease soon after their removal to a 
more elevated situation, although the distance has been inconsi¬ 
derable—in many instances not exceeding half a dozen miles, and 
in some where the distance has been still less; whilst the instances 
of cattle being affected on a removal from those situations to the 
mosses are very rare indeed. I Avould not, however, infer from 
this, that the cattle which are kept upon, or have been bred or 
reared upon, or who from length of time have become, in a man- 
