SUPPOSED POISONING OF PIGS BY CONVOLVULUS. 727 
France an esteemed article of diet. With us it is principally 
used as a dessert, if we except its Christmas employment in 
the stuffing of turkeys. Neither the beech nor the chesnut 
have any medicinal qualities, but still, as useful and orna¬ 
mental trees, they take a high place, and both are worthy of 
cultivation, not only for pleasure, but profit. The latter must 
not be confounded with the horse-chesnut, which is a different 
tree with bitter fruit ; the subject of our present notice, 
on account of its edible fruit being distinguished as the 
“ sweet chesnut,” while te horse-chesnut,” on the contrary, is 
meant to distinguish a fruit not partaken of as food by man, 
though it might be by inferior animals. 
SUPPOSED POISONING OF PIGS BY CON¬ 
VOLVULUS. 
By Harry Olver, M.B.C.V.S., Tamworth, Staffordshire. 
That pretty member of the vegetable kingdom, the wild 
convolvulus (commonly called “ laplove”), which, when it 
extensively prevails, is such a pest to the gardeners, appears 
to have caused the death of several pigs, the property of Mr. 
J. Hellaby, of Hogshill near Tamworth, and as such a case 
of poisoning is to me quite new, I send you a short history of 
it, thinking that it may be interesting to the readers of the 
Veterinarian. 
My attention was first called to the animals on the 10th 
of August, when I received a messageTrom Mr. Hellaby, ask¬ 
ing me to come at once to see some pigs that were dying in a 
peculiar way. On my arrival I found that six pigs, out of a 
lot of twenty, three months old, had died since the pre¬ 
vious evening. I should state that Mr. Hellaby is a large 
farmer keeping a number of cows for cheesemaking, and that 
the pigs in question were fed principally on the “ whey,” 
and consequently did not, as a rule, get any green food. 
This circumstance will probably account for their having 
eaten the convolvulus, because generally animals appear to 
have a great objection to it. 
Without knowing that the pigs had had anything to eat 
besides a little barley meal mixed with “ whey,” I proceeded 
to make a post-mortem examination of one of the last which 
had died, and on opening the abdomen I found a consider¬ 
able quantity of serous effusion existing in the cavity; the 
intestines were empty, with the exception of a very little 
xlv. 49 
