354 
P. PAQUIN. 
ble animal, and particularly the well fed young calves, are 
simply the fields in which the parasites develop, generate 
and thus cause disturbance in the system. 
The disease is not transmitted bv contact, but is inoculable 
directly, as will be seen further. 
The nature of this disease then is: A specific, infectious 
malady, contracted by young cattle on infectious grounds and 
other infectious places, and the essential cause is a germ. 
As to the symptoms and lesions I shall mention only the 
characteristic ones, which are fever, lameness, and local swel¬ 
lings or black muscular tumors with formation of gas therein. 
The ordinary observer may notice the last named symptoms 
and lesions only. 
As a rule the proprietor is surprised one morning, to find 
among his herd of cattle, his best, fattest calf, or yearling or 
two-year old dead. The body is already swelled to enormous 
proportions, and there seems no clue to the cause of such 
rapid destruction. On examination he finds on the body a 
local place more enlarged than the rest, and in cutting into it 
the flesh is found dark and even black as tar. The hand 
passed over the skin covering this enlargement, causes a 
crackling or crepitating noise much as the crumpling of paper 
in the hand; the knife causes a screeching sound in passing 
through the mass. These peculiar sounds are due to the gas 
generated by the germs growing in the tissues. Exposed to 
the air a little while, the dark and apparently bruised flesh 
regains its natural red color more or less, but not its natural 
condition in full. 
In the tissues so abnormal at the time, may be found the 
germs of black leg. 
Perhaps that for a couple of days there will be no more 
trouble, and the proprietor then will feel secure, but on the 
other hand as he watches, he may notice a subject more or 
less lame, in a fore leg or in a hind leg, and soon dullness will 
be appreciable. 
On close inspection and hand examination the crepitation, 
if not the swelling, will be detected. From this moment it 
will not be long as a rule that the enlargement will be marked, 
and probably death will have gathered the patient, for very 
