128 
THE COTTAGE GARDENER 
November 17. 
with my best fowls. Now, mark the result. In a few' clays I 
saw that this fowl was affected, I instantly removed it, but 
too late, for the greater part of the yard became affected, 
and in spite of every care, the disease proved fatal to more 
than forty of my very best young birds—Dorkings, Spanish, 
and Cochins. 
Perhaps the non-contagionists may say—Oh ! it was the 
wet weather which has caused the disease; you were not 
more unlucky than others. Perhaps so; but how came the 
first bird affected ? and how was it, that in the next run, be¬ 
longing to a neighbour, and separated only by open lath- 
work, where forty Cochins and Dorkings, of all ages, ■were 
kept, under circumstances much less conducive to health, 
being badly housed, very dirtily kept, and irregularly fed, 
not one u’as affected? 
I am neither so ignorant of the true laws of medical 
evidence, nor sufficient of an empiric, to regard the con¬ 
tagious on non-contagiou§ character of this disease so 
settled by a single experiment, even though extending to so 
many cases ; at the same time, I cannot but maintain that it 
affords a very strong presumption that it is contagious. 
Again, the numerous letters that I have received, stating 
that the introduction of a single bird from a show or sale¬ 
room has often been the means of introducing the disease 
where it was previously unknown, tend to the same con¬ 
clusion. 
And the practical experience of such old breeders as 
Roseoe, Baily, &c. has led them to the same result. As to 
my “foregone conclusions” and “self-imposed judgment” 
to support “previous impressions," &c., of which I am 
accused by Dr. Horner, at page 70, I may remark, that 
they constitute one of those facts ? which some writers are 
particularly fond of setting up for the pleasure of knocking 
down again. I had not arrived at any' previous conclusion 
as to the contagion or non-contagion of roup, and, therefore, 
performed the experiments (as it turns out, at a very heavy 
pecuniary sacrifice), in order to ascertain the point; and, as 
to the “genuineness of the preliminaries," I must, even in 
spite of the doubtin the Doctor’s mind, boldmyself perfectly 
competent to pronounce as to whether the subjects of my 
experiments were or were not affected with the disease. 
In my little work on “ Profitable Poultry,” I stated, that 
several diseases had been confounded together under the 
name of roup. Dr. Horner “repudiates the notion." If he 
will turn to “Richardson on Domestic Fowl,” he will find 
that under the same title, true roup, gapes, inflammation of 
the trachea, and inflammation of the tail gland, are all 
confounded together. 
As to the disease being merely an inflammatory catarrh, 
its extreme virulence and extraordinary fatality, is, to my 
mind, a conclusive negative to the supposition; common 
catarrh is not a fatal disease, and is amenable to medicine, 
which is not the case with roup. 
This leads me to the treatment. If I had arrived at any 
satisfactory conclusion this article would have been pub¬ 
lished long since. I have been continuing my experiments 
with various remedies for many months, having tried stimu¬ 
lants of various kinds; calomel, with and without opium; 
tonics, as iron, gentian and sulphur, purgatives, Ac., as 
external applications. I have also employed mercurial 
ointment; nitrate of silver, tincture of iodine, Ac., but all 
with very indifferent success ; an equal proportion recovering 
under every kind of treatment. Recently, I have found 
injecting a solution of sulphate of copper, or sulphate of 
zinc, into the nostrils, more efficacious than any other mode 
of treatment. A solution (five gains to the ounce of water) 
is taken, and after pressing out the discharge, is dropped 
into each nostril; as it is difficult to convey fluid into the 
nose from the front, 1 usually take a few drops in a tube 
(a very small quill will answer), and opening the mouth, 
pass some into the cavity of the nose, through the roof, 
dropping it into the long slit which may be observed there; 
to perform this, it is requisite that the fowl be held on its 
back by an assistant. In this case, the remedy is at once 
applied to the affected membrane, and with a much more 
beneficial result than when medicines are given internally. 
In one or two severe eases, where the secretion has be¬ 
come solid, causing a firm, permanent swelling, I have 
found it requisite to open the side of the face, and extract 
the secretion; but it is not in many cases that it is suffi¬ 
ciently solid to be readily removed in that manner. 
It is hardly requisite to state, that in order to lead to any 
hope of success, the patients must be warmly, drily, and 
cleanly housed, the heads bathed, and that they must be 
supplied with abundance and variety of good food; as the 
sight is often obscured, meal in paste will be found better 
than whole corn, and a little stimulant, as cayenne or 
common pepper, I think desirable. 
My opinion has been asked respecting an Essay advertised 
on this subject. I fooled away a shilling on its purchase, and 
had a pamphlet sent me about one-quarter the size of the 
little books so industriously and gratuitously circulated by 
Mr. Moses, and found that it contained nothing more than 
might be found in any of the old poultry-books—scraped 
horseradish and similar substances being the proposed 
remedy! 
The length of this paper precludes my noticing the 
criticism of Dr. Horner, on my statement respecting 
“ Gapes," which I shall have Much pleasure in replying to 
next week.— Yv r . B. Tegetmeier, Tottenham. 
Crowing IIen—Post Mortem Examination. 
It may be in the recollection of some of my readers, that 
I exhibited a specimen of a crowing hen, at tire Surrey 
Poultry Show, in contrast with what I regarded as a Hen 
Cock or Heunie ; stating, at the time, at page 38!) of the last 
volume, that I believed the change in habit and voice to 
arise from a diseased ovary or oviduct. A few days since I 
killed the hen for the purpose of examination. All the diges¬ 
tive and respiratory organs were perfectly healthy; the ovary, 
also, was not apparently diseased, although in an inactive 
state; the oviduct or egg-passage was discoloured at one 
part of its course ; and loose among the intestines, I found 
four yolks, or ova, one nearly globular, the others of irregular 
shape, having adapted themselves to the form of the 
surrounding parts; they were covered with firm membranes, 
| evidently the result of the inflammation they had excited by 
I escaping into the cavity of the body, instead of having been 
received by, and passed through, the oviduct, 
j It is surprising that the inflammation so excited did not 
prove fatal, as I have noticed, in a large number of cases 
where an ova or yolk has escaped from the egg passage. In 
this case the inflammatory action had entirely ceased, and 
was only to be traced by the resulting false membrane left 
behind; the hen, therefore, was in a healthy condition, and 
might, in all probability, have lived some years. 
The practical inferences to be drawn from this case and 
others are these; that when a hen ceases to lay, and takes to 
crowing, the cause is usually a diseased state of the ovary or 
oviduct; and, therefore, it is useless to keep her, as it is in 
the highest degree improbable that she will ever lay again. 
This state of things, however, should not be confounded 
with another, in which hens sometimes crow whilst laying, 
or at other times, arising merely from an acquired habit. I 
| believe this peculiarity to bo rare, a case never having come 
under my own observation. 
I beg to return my thanks to the gentleman who kindly 
forwarded the hen, as it has added an interesting specimen 
to my museum of morbid specimens.—IV. B. Tegetmeier, 
I Tottenham, Middlesex. 
ANTS—WASPS—GLASS SHELTERS. 
On the 19th of April, 1852, I addressed you under the 
present signature, and was much obliged by your reply. The 
j recipe for the ants did not answer, so I adopted another 
J plan, with perfect success. I made a mixture of a little 
I rum and brown sugar, put it in the saucers of pots, clear of 
! the roots of my trees ; it attracted them so strongly, that in 
the space of three weeks, with the all-powerful aid of boiling- 
water, I must have destroyed myriads of them, and this 
year there has not been one on my wall. If ever enquired 
about on this subject, you can safely state the above in 
reply. 
I was, however, desperately annoyed by wasps, in Sep¬ 
tember ; they were very large—half-way between a wasp and 
hornet; they were not satisfied with m’y fruit—and I had a 
splendid crop of Teaches and Nectarines, but my Apricots 
