BOTANY AS APPLIED TO VETERINARY SCIENCE. 531 
movements. Any abnormal change in its structure will con¬ 
stitute imsoundness. 
The corpora nigra in some eyes are particularly large and 
pendulous; so much so that it would appear they must 
intercept some of the rays of light, and by so doing produce 
inconvenience to the animal. During my practice I have 
never known an animal in any way suffer from this cause. 
1 once rode and drove a horse whose eyes were bountifully 
supplied with these bodies, and a better pair of eyes I never 
knew. It has been held to be unsoundness by some teachers. 
As all eyes have these bodies attached to them, it remains a 
question whether they should be considered an unsoundness. 
The result of my observations lead me to infer that they are 
not inconvenient, but’are merely a development of pigment 
which may be of service to the visual organ under many 
circumstances. 
Since the above was written I have been informed that at 
a fair recently held in Ireland a horse passed the ordeal of 
examination as to soundness by a veterinary surgeon, which 
had been examined by me a few months since—one eye was 
dark and the other approaching to it. Whether the amaurotic 
afiection under which the animal laboured at the time I saw 
him was purely sympathetic I am not prepared to say, but I 
suppose it was, as it is said the same horse was passed as 
perfect in every respect. I am of opinion, however, I should 
have observed some symptom, as I have done in many cases 
before, which would have led me to look for disorders of 
an occult character, such as chronic indigestion, stomach 
or heart disease. At the time of my examination these were 
all absent so far as I could judge, and hence the impression 
on my mind is, that the disease in this particular case was 
one of amaurosis produced by chronic retinitis. 
{To he continued^ 
BOTANY AS APPLIED TO VETERINARY SCIENCE. 
By W. Watson, M.R.C.V.S., Rugby. 
{Co7iiinuedfromp, 270). 
Ix my last communication in connection with the poi¬ 
sonous plants, I brought under notice the botanical cha¬ 
racters, &c. of the AU'opa helladonna, and shall now proceed 
to give a brief description of another plant, closely allied to 
