POISONING OP A COLT BY YEW. 
381 
see them dissevered. That it is often desirable in some 
places for a veterinary surgeon to unite some other business 
with his own, there can be no doubt. To such a one I 
w ? ould say—re-echoing the sentiments I think I have heard 
Professor Morton express—“ Avoid horse-dealing, and rather, 
if you are compelled to look to other resources, have a drug 
business attached.” 
Finally, let us all recollect that our respectability is not 
so universally established that we can afford to lose any of 
it, and it therefore behoves us to bear in mind an advice con¬ 
tained in the lecture alluded to at the commencement of my 
letter, w'hich happy mean is “ neither to be above nor below' 
our calling,” and thus avoid the Scylla on the one hand as 
w 7 ell as the Charybdis on the other. 
I am, Gentlemen, 
Very truly yours. 
To the Editors of the * Veterinarian * 
POISONING OF A COLT BY YEW. 
By C. Stephenson, M.R.C.Y.S., Newcastle-on-Tyne. 
The colt to which I am about to refer was the property 
of Joseph Laycock, Esq., of Low Gosforth, Northumberland, 
the present Mayor of Newcastle. 
I was consulted on the 22d of March last, as to the pro¬ 
bable cause of the death of a two-year old blood colt, which 
had been found dead in the park on the morning of the 10th. 
He w 7 as apparently quite well the night before, and there was 
no appearance of any struggling having taken place previous 
to death. 
The animal had been skinned and buried, and no more 
w r as thought of him until a few days after, w 7 hen Mr. 
Laycock observed that the ground near a yew tree in his 
shrubbery retained the prints of the colt’s feet, and that the 
tree appeared to have been nibbled at. Mr. Laycock having 
a few years ago had a horse poisoned by eating yew 7 leaves, he 
immediately suspected this to be the cause of the death of the 
colt; and on his consulting me, I at once gave it as my 
opinion that if the colt had eaten of the yew it was very 
likely to be so. It was therefore determined to exhume the 
