BONE DISORDER IN COWS. 
644 
Thus, if phosphates were indicated, we should use them. In 
cases of general debility, however, we should prefer linseed 
or corn meal, aided by stimulants, to bone-dust. Why not 
nse the bone-dust for manure? The animal would then have 
the benefit of it in its fodder. 
In reference to a deficiency of phosphate of lime in the 
milk, we would observe, that it may result either from im¬ 
paired digestion, (in such cases, a large amount of that article 
may be expelled from the system in the form of excrements,) 
or the food may lack it. We then have a sick plant, for we 
believe that the phosphate of lime is as necessary for the 
growth of the plant as it seems to be for animal development. 
If the plant lacks this important constituent, then its vitality, 
as a whole, will be impaired. This is all we desire to contend 
for in the animal, viz., that the disease is general, and cannot 
be considered or treated as a local affection. 
It has been observed that successive cultivation exhausts 
the soil, and deprives it of the constituents necessary for 
vegetable development. If so, it follows that there will be 
a deficiency of silicia, carbonate of lime—in short, a loss of 
carbon, hydrogen, nitrogen, and oxygen, not of phosphate of 
lime alone. 
The fields might be made to produce the requisite amount 
of nutriment by replacing every year, in the form of animal 
excrement, straw, wood ashes, and charcoal, as much as we 
remove from them in the form of produce. An increase of 
crop can only be obtained when we add more to the soil than 
we take away from it. 
“ In Flanders, the yearly loss of the necessary matters in 
the soil is completely restored by covering the fields with 
ashes of wood or bones, which may, or may not, have been 
lixiviated. The great importance of manuring with ashes 
has been long recognised by agriculturists as the result of 
experience. So great a value, indeed, is attached to this 
material in the vicinity of Marburg, and in the Wetterau— 
two well-known agricultural districts,—that it is transported, 
as a manure, from the distance of eighteen or twenty-four 
miles. Its use will be at once perceived, when it is considered 
that the ashes, after being washed with water, contain siliciate 
of potass exactly in the same proportion as in the straw, and 
that their only other constituents are salts of phosphoric 
acid. 5 ’ 
It is well known that phosphate of lime, potass, silicia, 
carbonate of lime, magnesia, and soda are discharged in the 
excrement and urine of the cow; and this happens when 
they are not adapted to assimilation, as well as when present 
