THE IMPROVEjMENT 
readers. While we say this with exultation, we can likewise 
say it without egotism, for the cause to which our Journal is 
devoted is that of our brethren ; its value depends on—has been 
created by—their labours ; and the good it has elfected is their 
work far more than ours. 
We will not again compare the state of veterinary science 
eight years ago with what it now is, nor put against each other 
the altered opinions, and usages, and practice of that time and 
the present: a slight review of the past year will be sufficient 
to illustrate the progress of our art. 
The use of the ergot of rye has been established in cases of 
difficult parturition in all our quadruped patients. For many a 
year past the writer of this article had been accustomed to have 
recourse to it in protracted labour in the bitch, and generally 
with success. If the powers of nature were not quite exhausted 
the uterus began once more to contract upon its contents. A 
communication from his talented pupil, Mr. Simpson, illustra¬ 
tive of this property of the spurred rye, induced Mr. Allinson 
to bear his testimony to its value in the difficult parturition of 
larger animals; and although Mr. Harrison’s report of it was 
not favourable, probably from one of those occasional mysterious 
and uncontrollable states of the cesophagean canal of the rumi¬ 
nant, yet the different result in other and not a few cases, of 
which the present writer has accidentally heard, or which have 
been privately communicated to him, w^arrant the conclusion that, 
judiciously administered, and with those guards and precautions 
that the case may require, the lives of many valuable animals 
inav be saved. 
From a French writer, M. Bouley, many valuable observa¬ 
tions, ai:id new to the English practitioner, have been translated 
on the causes and treatment of paralysis in the horse, and on 
the diseases of the spinal cord, and its membranes generally. 
Some interestino; observations have been made on the con- 
nexion of strangles with constitutional debility, by M. Corbet, 
and with a disposition to the formation of tumours elsewhere, 
by Mr. Brown. 
Mr. Bull has described a case of Asiatic cholera, or a disease 
identical with it, in a mare; and another writer has communi¬ 
cated a similar case in a zebra. 
