32 BOTANY AS APPLIED TO VETERINARY SCIENCE. 
tainties are here of no use ; in fact, they are worse than 
useless, as they may do harm. But having a knowledge of 
botany, he examines the contents with care,—and it may be 
calls in the microscope to his aid,—and as he does so he finds 
conclusive and self-convincing evidence of the presence of 
some poisonous plant. And in reply to his employer, it is 
not “ I think," nor “ I have reason to believe/' but a positive 
assertion—“ I am satisfied of the existence of such a plant 
in the material you requested me to examine." It is well 
known that not unfrequently large numbers of animals suffer 
from the poisonous effects of some plant growing in the pas¬ 
ture in which they are placed ; or it may be gathered with the 
grass and made into hay, and the veterinary surgeon is called 
upon to attend these animals, and he is requested by the owner 
to examine the herbage or the fodder upon which they have 
been feeding. How much he is at fault here unless he 
knows something of botany. But to show its usefulness in 
this division I think I cannot do so more forcibly than by 
relating a case which occurred to myself some time ago. I 
was requested by a gentleman living in Rugby to go and see 
two valuable greyhound puppies (one of them being the now 
celebrated dog “Perceptible"), which he said had got the 
distemper. I found the animals in what the attendant 
described as fits; lying upon the ground partially insensible, 
with a quantity of frothy mucus escaping from the mouth, 
&c., and other symptoms evidently showing the centres of 
the nervous system to be much affected. I inquired how 
long they had been unwell, and when they first exhibited the 
symptoms they were then suffering from. He told me they 
were playing about in the morning, and seemed quite well, but 
in the evening, upon looking at them, he found them in their 
present state. My curiosity being somewhat excited, I re¬ 
quested to be permitted to see the place in which they had 
been confined. I found it to be a part of an old flower- 
garden, in which they had been turned loose that morning 
for the first time; and upon looking round I discovered 
several remnants of different plants, &c., which by the play¬ 
fulness of the puppies had been pulled to pieces, and 
amongst them portions of the stems and leaves of the 
aconitum napellus , or monkshood, those parts of the plant 
being then in their greatest activity. Here at once was a 
clue to the symptoms the animals exhibited. In short, they 
were suffering from the poisonous effects of the aconite, and 
by the timely employment of antidotes, in a few 7 hours they 
recovered. 
(To he continued.) 
