THE RECENT CATTLE DISEASE IN KANSAS. 
creasingly rare in the Old World, the general improvement of the 
soil by intelligent culture having restricted the development of 
ergot, and the extensive production of potatoes, turnips, beets? 
and other succulent roots and vegetables, having done much to 
limit its evil effects when it does exist. The abortions and diffi¬ 
cult parturitions in Nassau and Central Europe in 1829, in con¬ 
nection with the damp, cloudy season and spoiled forage, were 
probably in part due to ergot (Franque, Zundel). 
Ergotism prevailed in man and pigs in Saxony and Northern 
Europe in 1831-’32, in connection with an unusual development 
of ergot in rye, and dogs and cats compelled to eat of the rye 
went mad—nervous ergotism? (Wagner, Helm, Verbeyen). 
Abortions and retention of the placenta were also prevalent 
among cattle (Helm). An extensive outbreak occurred in South¬ 
ern France in 1835 (Barrier); also in Hesse (Heusinger). An 
epizootic of ergotism at Trois Crois, France, in 1841, was traced 
to the ergoted state of the rye and other gramineas in the district 
(Edinb. Month. Jour., Jan., 1842). 
In 1842 the dry gangrene of the limbs of cattle in Central 
New York was successfully traced to the presence of ergot in the 
hay (Randall), and my observations in 1868 in New York and 
Ontario fully confirmed this conclusion. Since that time the re¬ 
ports of the Commissioner of Agriculture have furnished frequent 
accounts of such outbreaks in different States, though the true 
source of the trouble has not always been recognized. 
Professor Tanner, writing in 1859, traced the abortions in cows 
J n the wet meadow lands in Western England to the prevalence of 
ergot in the grasses, and without doubt many of the abortions 
occurring in the United States are due to a similar cause. 
Smut —Closely allied to ergot in its effects is the smut of Indian 
corn ( Ustilayo Maidis). Roulin writes of this that in Colombia, 
South America, persons who eat it lose their hair and teeth, swine 
shed their bristles and become weak and atrophied in their hind 
limbs, mules lose their hair and hoofs, and hens lay eggs without 
shells. Tschudi says the ergot of maize is commonly used at Lima 
in place of ergot of rye, and another writer mentions an almost 
universal occurrence of abortion in cows in Brazil from eating this 
