— 
ABORTION. | 
by the fetid smell of it, and of the vaginal dis- 
charge, the parts should be washed with a weak 
solution in water (1 to 16) of the chloride of 
lime, some of which may also be injected into 
the uterus. If fever should supervene, a dose of 
Epsom salts, timeously administered, will remove 
the symptoms. If debility and want of appetite 
should remain, a little gentian and ginger, with 
small doses of Epsom salts, will speedily restore 
the animal. Care should be taken that the food 
shall not be too nutritive or too great in quan- 
tity.’ Mr. Spooner recommends that the ewe 
be placed in a sheltered situation away from the 
rest of the flock, that she be allowed plenty of 
fresh air, that she receive on the first day 4 oz. 
of Epsom salts, 1 drachm of laudanum, and 4 a 
drachm of powdered camphor in some nourishing 
gruel, and that she receive also on the second 
day the second and the third of these medicines, 
but not the salts unless she happen to be costive. 
The aborted objects ought to be carefully and 
deeply buried, and ought not to be approached 
_ by the shepherd lest he should convey infection 
from them to some other ewes of the flock. 
Abortion in the Mare.—Abortion in the mare 
is not infrequent. . Its usual causes are over- 
exertion, falls, kicks, and improper feeding. A 
pregnant mare may sometimes be seen on the 
worst pasture of an injudiciously conducted farm, 
| half-starved on insufficient herbage, and totally 
deprived of the nutritive feeding and the special 
care bestowed upon working horses ; and, in such 
circumstances, she incurs considerable hazard of 
miscarrying. She does not require, indeed, to be 
fed in the same high manner as if she were fully 
| and constantly at work ; yet she ought to have a 
little better food than common herbage during the 
whole period of gestation. She ought to receive 
one or two feeds of corn a-day during the latter 
half of that period, and she will be all the better, 
and none the worse, to perform moderate work till 
within a few days of the calculated time of par- 
turition. If, on the other hand, she be unduly 
indulged, and too luxuriously fed, she will incur 
risk of inflammatory action throughout her sys- 
tem, of excitement and disturbance in the uterine 
organism, and of consequent abortion with ag- 
gravated and dangerous accompaniments. The 
most common period of abortion in the mare, as 
in the ewe, is about mid-gestation. “Good feed- 
ing and moderate exercise,’ says Mr. Youatt, 
“will be the best preventives of this mishap. 
The mare that has once aborted is liable to a 
repetition of the accident, and therefore should 
never be suffered to be with other mares between 
the fourth and fifth months ; for such is the power 
of imagination or of sympathy in the mare, that 
if one suffers abortion, others in the same pas- 
ture will too often share the same fate. Farm- 
ers wash, and paint, and tar their stables, to 
prevent some supposed infection ;—the infection 
lies in the imagination.”—White’s Natural His- 
tory.—Skellet on the Parturition of the Cow.— 
ABORTIVE CORN. 
Clater’s Cattle Doctor.—Chabert’s Instructions Ve~ 
terinaires.— Youatt on Cattle — Youatt on Sheep.— 
Spooner on Sheep.— Youatt on the Horse. 
ABORTION. «An accidentally barren or an 
immaturable condition in the seeds or seed-ves- 
sels of plants. True barrenness consists in the 
total absence of seed, or of the organs which form 
it; but abortion consists in the stopping and de- 
feating of the actual process of the seed’s forma- 
tion. Thus a flower falls off, without being fol- 
lowed by a fruit or seed-vessel; or a fruit, a 
receptacle, or a legume is fairly formed, but, in- 
stead of coming to perfection, shrivels, corrupts, 
and falls. ‘The most common causes of abortion 
are injuries to the flower, from the weather or 
from abrasion,—to the incipient fruit or seed- 
vessel, from insects or from ill-usage by man,—to 
the leaves, from insects, particularly the catter- 
pillars of moths and butterflies,—to the fruit- 
stalks, from insects, particularly the aphide and 
the cocci,—and to the roots, from exposure to 
the atmosphere, or from a too free use of the 
knife or hatchet. 
on the diseases of plants, and other articles there 
indicated. See article Disnasrs or PLants. 
ABORTIVE CORN. A diseased condition of 
growing corn, prominently noticed nearly a cen- 
tury ago in France. A chief description of it 
occurs in a prize essay of M. Tillet, presented to 
the academy of Bourdeaux; and this description 
is, in substance, adopted both in English agricul- 
tural works of eighty years ago, and in agricul- 
tural works of the present day. The distemper 
of abortive corn, says M. Tillet, shows itself long 
before harvest, when the stalk is not more than 
18 inches in height, and may be known by a de- 
formity in the stem, the leaves, the ear, and even 
the grain. The stems of plants affected by the 
distemper are generally shorter than those of | 
other corn-plants of the same kind and age; and 
are crooked, knotted, and fragile. The leaves are 
usually of a bluish green colour, and curled up 
in various ways,—sometimes like wafer-cakes, 
and often in a spiral form. The ears have very 
little of a natural shape; and they are lean and | 
withered, and show very imperfect rudiments of | 
either the chaff or the grain. All these symp- | 
toms, however, occur only in the most thoroughly | 
The stems are often pretty — 
distempered plants. 
Other causes might be named; |. 
but they are more properly noticed in the article | 
straight, the leaves but little curled, and the | 
chaff tolerably well formed ; but the last of these, | 
instead of enclosing a small embryo, white and | 
soft at the summit, contains only a green kernel, | 
terminating in a point, not unlike a young pea 
when forming in its pod. The abortive kernels 
have two or three very visible points, and are 
then’ fashioned as if two or three were joined at 
the base ; and when they acquire their ultimate 
condition, they become dry and black, and pos- 
sess so close a resemblance to the seeds of cockle, 
as to be readily mistaken for them by farmers 
unacquainted with the distemper of abortive 
