OATTLE POISONING IN INDIA. 
495 
more or less abundant. We cannot hope to get milk rich in 
butter by withholding nitrogen from the.food, nor, on the 
other hand, can we expect to obtain a cheesy milk by stinting 
the fatty elements of the food. These and similar investiga¬ 
tions are proofs of the necessity of studying more carefully 
the physiology of the animals of the farm .—The Irish 
Farmers ' Gazette. 
CATTLE POISONING IN INDIA. 
A huge report on cattle plagues in India has just issued, 
according to the Friend of India, from the Government press. 
Its thousand pages represent the labours of a Commission 
appointed in 1869, under the presidency of Staff Veterinary 
Surgeon Hallen. Its contents include an interesting abstract 
of evidence bearing on the crime of cattle poisoning, which 
has of late years been disagreeably rife in various parts of 
India, more especially, perhaps, in the districts of Jaunpore, 
Benares, Ghazipore, Azimgurh, Mirzapore, and Allahabad, 
all lying together in the south-eastern corner of the north¬ 
west provinces. We remember that some tw r enty-five years 
ago Cawnpore bore an evil name for rascality of the same 
sort, and that officers' horses passing through the station in 
charge of native grooms sometimes fell a prey to the greed of 
unscrupulous chamars, or leather-dressers, who turned the 
hides to good account. In the present report, however, it is 
bullocks, kine, and buffaloes that suffer most from the same 
cause. According to Dr. Chevers, in sentencing a man tried 
at Sholopore in 1864 for cattle poisoning with balls of a 
white substance sewn up in bailee leaves, the judge spoke of 
the crime as far from uncommon. In 1851 four chamars 
were convincted at Sarun of poisoning cattle with aconite for 
the sake of their hides. In this case the poison was applied 
by pricking the beasts' heads. Poison balls of aconite, 
arsenic, datura, or some other drug are mixed up with the 
food the cattle eat, or introduced into their bowels in other 
ways. Sometimes the chamar employs a woman or child to 
drop poison in the field where cattle are grazing. An 
immense quantity of arsenic is imported yearly into every 
Indian port, and for controlling the sale of this poison no act 
has yet been enforced, except one passed for the Bombay 
Presidency in 1866. The detection of the crime is made the 
more difficult by the inability of the police to take any 
VOL, xlv. 34 
