POISONING BY COLCHICUM, 
433 
remarks only apply, it will be seen, to a great majority of 
cases ; they will not hold good in all. There are frequent 
instances—and some such have certainly fallen under my 
own observation—where the poison has been eaten, even when 
in a growing state. Young animals, for instance, on being 
first turned out, have occasionally been known to poison 
themselves thus, and cattle that have been brought from dis¬ 
tant and different kinds of pasture to lands where such plants 
were abundant, have not unfrequently been found to fall 
victims to the change. In winter more especially, the green 
yew will sometimes be consumed eagerly, and the conse¬ 
quences are often fatal. There is something strange and 
mysterious about this occasional failure of the brute instinct 
which I confess I cannot attempt to explain. I can only 
remark that some experience and observation have enabled 
me to bear strong testimony to the fact. 
I have been led thus much at length into the subject of 
vegetable poisoning by the feeling that it is one which has 
never yet received sufficient consideration, either at the hands 
of the veterinary surgeon or the agriculturist. Our friend. 
Professor Morton, for example, whose ei Veterinary Toxico¬ 
logical Chart’ is the only work which the profession possesses 
on the subject, does not even mention the poison whose 
fearful effect I have just narrated. Nor is this want of special 
knowledge to be wondered at when we consider the low 
amount of intelligence generally brought to bear on the 
diseases of cattle. Science is only an accumulation of facts 
properly reasoned upon, and requires, therefore, the oppor¬ 
tunities of observation for its full development. Even human 
surgery made but little progress during the centuries when 
its practice w r as almost exclusively confined to the barber; 
and until the agriculturist has learned to distrust altogether 
the illiterate farrier and cowleech, he must not hope to reap 
the advantages which veterinary science may some day be able 
to afford him. I am satisfied that large numbers of animals 
fall victims to inadvertent poisoning every year, where the 
real cause is never even suspected. Could a computation be 
made of the value of all the animals thus annually sacrificed, 
its amount would perhaps seem somewhat startling. He is a 
very lucky man who has followed the pursuit of farming many 
years without some such losses. I have been endeavouring 
to make a rough calculation of the value of stock of different 
kinds that have died from poisoning by the yew alone, within 
*ny own observation and experience , and I find it considerably 
exceeds a thousand pounds. This fact is of itself sufficient to 
show the importance of these matters, and to prove, if any 
