CONSUMPTION IN COWS. 
349 
developed. This is a fact well known to dairymen. While it 
is especially prevalent in low, moist, woody pastures, it is, even 
there, of more frequent occurrence, and more fatal in spring 
and autumn, and when the w^eather is unusually cold and 
changeable. 
Change of Climate .—There is a vast deal, likewise, in the 
cow being suited to the climate, or rather being in her native 
climate, or one that closely resembles it. This explains the 
strange difference of opinion with regard to breeds. Every 
farmer is partial to his own breed, and undervalues those of 
other districts ; and, to a very great degree, he is right. His 
cattle breathe their native air ; they are in the climate to which 
by.a slow and sanative process, and extending for many a genera¬ 
tion back, their constitution has been, in a manner, moulded ; and 
it is only after a long seasoning, and a dangerous one too, that 
the stranger becomes adapted to the temperature and degree of 
dryness or moisture, and more particularly to the soil and differ¬ 
ence of herbage in which she is placed. There is more in this 
than is often dreamed of in the farmer’s philosophy. 
While there is derangement in every system, the respiratory 
one seems to suffer most, and a slow, insidious, yet fatal change 
is there oftenest effected. If a dairy of cows is removed from a 
moist situation to a dry and colder one, consumption will often 
appear among them, although a dry air is otherwise esteemed a 
specific against the complaint; but if they are taken from a 
dry situation and put on a woody and damp one, phthisis 
is sure to break out before the first season is past. There is no 
animal wdth so much difficulty naturalized in a foreign soil as 
the cow. I knew a lady who long tried in vain to naturalize the 
Durham cow in one of the northern counties of Scotland; but 
they all died of hoose or phthisis; and she could at last only 
effect her purpose by admitting one cross from the native breed. 
Mismanagement .—I will not repeat what I have said of the 
cauvses of hoose, pneumonia, and pleurisy in cattle. All these 
diseases will degenerate into phthisis; and the causes.which 
produce them wall often produce, or lay the foundation for, 
consumption, without the intervention of these diseases. Con¬ 
sumption, like many other maladies, is principally to be traced 
to our absurd management of our domesticated quadrupeds, and 
equally to the strange extremes into w’hich we fall of over-nursing 
cruel abandonment. 
Swiss Cattle .—Hurtrel d’Arboval, to whom we are indebted 
for one of the best accounts of this disease that I am acquainted 
with, and from whom I have derived some useful hints, states 
a curious fact, that the Swiss cow’s are not subject to phthisis, 
VOL. VI. Y y 
