THE CATTLE PLAGUE IN SPAIN. 
261 
“ All natural science/^ says the Botanist Mayer, and, 
indeed, science of every kind, is to be referred to the ming¬ 
ling together of two distinct sources, the observation of facts, 
and speculation upon the facts observed/’ How much spe¬ 
culation can the veterinary profession in England show? 
I hope Mr. Broad may explain the use of his heavy shoes 
and leather soles in laminitis; and also whether the journey, 
the subsequent exertion, or the sawdust, or neither produced 
inflammation of the hind feet in the examples he affords us. 
Mr. Broad’s and my experience differ as to the treatment 
of what he termsj^^ sunken soles.” As he speaks merely from 
experience, I would like to explain to him theoretically how 
sunken soles should be treated, and afterwards give him 
practical examples; but this I find would, in the present 
stages of our discussion, be out of place. I need, therefore, 
only say, that when he next visits Chatham, I will show him 
a horse that, in 1865, was about to be destroyed for convex 
soles, the result of laminitis, and that I bought merely for 
the purpose of experiment. For six months he could not 
leave his loose box. At the end of that time he had tips put 
on, and was conveyed to a low lying meadow for three months, 
was then shod with shoes plane on the foot surface and put 
to work ; and for the last three months has been travelling 
sometimes twenty and thirty miles two and three times a week 
over the worst roads in the country, the crust of his now con¬ 
cave soles protected a la Charliery —a victim of theorizing. 
Before closing this letter, allow me to make a correction 
in my former one. I said that in shoeing, throwing the 
whole weight and strain on the wall and laminae by paring 
the sole and frog, was the chief excitant of laminitis. I 
should have written chief predisposant.' 
THE CATTLE PLAGUE IN SPAIN. 
By the Same. 
In the interesting Report on the Cattle of Spain,” 
drawn up by Mr. Consul General Dunlop, and which appeared 
in the last month’s issue of the Veterinarian, there is n precis 
of some notes on the rinderpest, from the pen of Don Jose de 
Prado y Guillen, Chief Professor at the Veterinary School of 
Cordova, that merits some notice. The whole report is 
worthy of careful perusal, as it is not often we can learn so 
much regarding the management of cattle in that country, or 
of the maladies to which they are liable; but the attention of 
