VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE IN SCOTLAND. 481 
At that time her belly and chest began to swell from the 
udder forwards. He saw the pursuer lance the swollen parts, 
and water flowed from them. He assisted the pursuer to 
foment the swellings. He saw and assisted the pursuer to 
take out the cow’s heart after death, and was present when 
it and the lump attached to it were weighed. Together they 
weighed thirty-three pounds; and though he knows a 
healthy heart, having seen many taken from the carcase, he 
never saw one having a similar excrescence. 
Mary Cobbin, the pursuer’s domestic servant, saw the 
cow in March (three months after the purchase); she fed the 
cow daily. The cow did not eat well. The witness gave her 
turnips, boiled and raw, and bran and draff, and plotted (or 
warmed) hay. She saw medicines given to the cow with 
gruel, and a bottle of porter daily. The cow was swollen 
about the chest when she entered pursuer’s service. She 
saw the swollen parts lanced by pursuer, and water coming 
from them, the parts were afterwards bathed in warm water. 
The cow did not give much milk when she saw her, and 
gave less and less, according as she was eating. She saw the 
heart and great lumps of matter surrounding it, when 
brought to the byre from the tan yard, opposite where the 
cow had been dissected. 
James Henderson, a tanner, saw the cow before she died. 
She was lean and swollen about the breast. He saw the pur¬ 
suer dissect the cow, and assisted him in taking out the 
heart and a large lump of stuff along with it. Both were 
weighed in his presence, producing thirty-three pounds. He 
took them to the pursuer’s byre. 
Joseph Skea, Veterinary Surgeon, Aberdeen, obtained his 
diploma from the Veterinary College, Edinburgh, in 1843; was 
called, along with Cuming of Ellon, to examine the heart. They 
dissected it, and found a large abscess on one side. The 
heart itself was apparently healthy, but the abscess was very 
large, and had the appearance of a bag full of fluid matter, 
with some portions of it curdled, and of a thicker consistency 
than others. This bag was on the outside of the pericar¬ 
dium and attached to it. The covering of the bag was no 
part of the structure of a healthy animal, and had been 
formed adventitiously by the inflammatory action of some 
irritating cause. The abscess must have existed for a long¬ 
time, and he holds it to be a physical impossibility that it 
could have been formed within four months. Believes it 
would have been difficult to detect such an abscess in a 
living animal who was eating its meat. The symptoms he 
would expect to find in a cow with such an abscess would 
