MIDLAND COUNTIES VETERINARY MEDICAL ASSOCIATION. 773 
It was agreed to hold the next meeting at Derby ; and Mr. Blake¬ 
way, of Stourbridge, volunteered to read a paper. 
The President then addressed the meeting on the great import¬ 
ance of each member attending the meetings as regularly as 
possible, and taking part in the proceedings, urging that according 
to the zeal of each individual member would be the success of the 
association and the benefit to be derived from it. 
Mr. Bay ns, of Darrington, Salop, then read a paper on “ The 
Causes of Abortion in Cows and Ewes.” 
Mr. President and Gentlemen, —About twelve months ago 
I xvas requested by the committee of the Wenlock Farmers’ 
Club to furnish that body with a paper upon the subject of 
abortion in cows and ewes; with wdiich request I complied. 
The paper, which was not written for a professional audience, 
was read and discussed by the agriculturalists present at one 
of their quarterly meetings. In going into the subject upon 
that occasion I found that a field was opened up for further inves¬ 
tigation ; and as I never published the general remarks I then 
made, I have been induced to lay them before you, in an altered 
form, in this paper, for your consideration this evening, feeling 
assured that the discussion to which they may give rise will be 
beneficial to many of us, and can hardly fail to prove interesting 
to all. 
The causes and prevention of abortion in cows and ewes are 
subjects which appears to have received but little attention commen¬ 
surate with their importance, and upon which very little light is 
thrown in the pages of veterinary literature. By way of preface to 
the remarks I am about to make, I will ask your indulgence while 
I glance briefly at the connection which in a normal or healthy 
condition exists between the mother and the foetus in utero, and 
make a few very general remarks upon the physiology of the re¬ 
production of the higher forms of animal life, so far as the part 
performed by the female is concerned. And in order to do so I 
will first give a brief anatomical description of those organs in the 
female whose functions are devoted to this end. 
Although the male animal exerts such a powerful influence over 
the type and character of the progeny, his share in its production 
is small, when compared with the long and tedious part contributed 
by the female. The chief organ in the latter is the uterus or womb, 
which is a hollow, musculo-membranous viscus, united to the ante¬ 
rior part of the vagina, and destined for the reception of the fruits 
of impregnation. It is situated in that cavity of the trunk called 
the pelvis, to the walls of which it is attached by broad productions 
of peritoneum termed ligaments. This organ is very small in the 
virgin, but acquires immense proportions during the period of 
utero-gestation ; and although after the completion of that period 
it becomes considerably smaller, it is never again reduced to its 
original capacity. From the extremities of those projections of 
he uterus known as the horns are two canals called the Fallopian 
