you will do no harm by this course. To reassure you, I may state that the same treatment is frequently adopted in the uræmia of mankind with equally good results. I have given a drachm in twelve hours without producing sleep, and with excellent results. Do not be afraid of it. Use it freely, and it

will do you good service.

With regard to other treatment, I advise you to get the horse into slings as early as possible. If he entirely loses the control of his hind limbs, it will, of course, be necessary to lower him. I may add that a smart stroke of the whip will often make him stand when hanging in them.

The local complication, the "kidney trouble," attracts usually the most attention from the laity and the ignorant horse doctor. Let me most strongly impress upon you the fact that it is not a kidney affection. The kidneys are doing their work,-are working up to the very limit of their power. Do not aggravate them by the use of diuretics, especially of those resinous in character. If you must use them then, and when on the road to recovery, use squills and digitalis. If there is retention, shown by examination of the bladder, you may pass the catheter. And here again, a word. Do not do it until your horse is comfortably in slings, and has had a dose or two of morphia; as I have, on several occasions, seen the irritation caused by the passage of the catheter cause convulsions and the getting down of the animal. Of course, if you find your patient recumbent, with a full bladder, it is well, especially in the horse, to put on the hind hobbles and take away the water; though personally I prefer to pass the catheter standing.

A hint about the catheter. You will find the thick foreign instrument, with bluntish point, much less liable to lose its way than the thin American one, fit only to pass on the stretched urethra of a bull.

Have you vaginitis or cystitis following? Treat them on general principles. Rest the bladder by the use of purgatives, sheath it by the administration of mucilaginous drinks, and soothe it by warm rectal injections. You may, do you deem it necessary, supplement these means by washing out the bladder through the catheter. What food? No food for forty-eight hours; then food poor in nitrogen. Preventive measures,

thorough ventilation, good drainage, good grooming, regular exercise,—even if the hired man has to be sent out sleighing,— and a diminished ration if the quietude is imperative.

You will find the question as to the use of nerve stimulants and blisters discussed in the scanty and disgraceful veterinary literature of this subject. Their use could only arise from a mistaken notion regarding the pathology of the condition. I would take this opportunity of saying that if you would aid in the advance-now so great-of veterinary science in this country, you must go to comparative medical literature for aid. You are not competent to treat diseases of the lower animals unless you are able thoroughly to understand and appreciate human pathology. Confine yourselves to the scanty pabulum offered you by veterinary literature, and you will be routine practitioners at best, groping in the dark, not after science but dollars; and, although the ability you may discover in finding these last may be a surprise to your neighbors and yourselves, you will never benefit your chosen profession one ha'porth. Nay, you will aid to drag it down, to clip its wings, and to keep it where it has been too long, in the dog-eared volume of "Every Man His Own Horse Doctor," in the chest where the blacksmith keeps his spare nails and oakum, or the livery-stable man his winter blankets.

If you can do no more, make a careful record of facts, and publish them every once in a while for those more favored by circumstances to draw inferences from. Report your unsuccessful cases as well as those redounding to your credit, and so aid in suppressing the worm in the tongue, the wolf in the tail, and the salt mackerel for the loss of cud of our generation.

FASHION IN CATTLE BREEDING.

The following paper on Fashion in Breeding is opportune, and brings to view some of the follies that pertain to stock breeding. While we do not endorse the sentiment in full, we regard it as too valuable to be kept from our people.

FASHION IN SHORTHORN BREEDING.

BY DR. A. H. LACKEY, PEABODY, KANSAS.

Since the revival of Shorthorn breeding after the financial depression of 1857-'60, since the war, and particularly since the New York Mills sale, in September, 1873, the tendency of Shorthorn breeding has changed, a new fashion has sprung up, an aristocracy of pedigree and of breeders and breeding has arisen, and a new order of things has obtained in this country, that seriously theatens the supremacy of our ancient and unrivalled breed, "the lordly Shorthorn." Such an artificial style of breeding has been introduced by some men, such “refined,” “ high bred,"sweet-faced," "silken-haired," "lady-like," and "graceful" (these are the terms they use) Shorthorns are now bred, that men of an ultra utilitarian turn of mind, men who value quantity before quality, milk and beef more than style, are driven away from our kind, and in looking for something better are very unwisely bringing in as rivals to the broad-backed, deep-chested, strong-constitutioned, rich-milking, kindly tempered Shorthorn, the vicious-tempered, slab-sided, non-milking, unpedigreed Hereford, and the little, bunchy, butting, kicking, poor-milking, unpedigreed, scrub Galloway and Polled Angus. Even the diminutive, sickly, consumptive, contemptible Jersey is poking its black, snotty nose, and blowing its sick, tuberculous breath, in our faces, and entering into the pastures where, in

times gone by, a far better class of milkers and a healthier class of cattle used to roam.

66

It has become fashionable to call certain kinds of cattle, those bred in a certain way and from a certain origin, "high bred," "well bred," "pure bred," or " fashionably bred" cattle, and to sneer at others bred differently, though it seems to me more sensibly, as "promiscuously bred," as of "mixed breeding," "impure breeding," and, worst of all, of "unfashionable breeding," and to dub the breeder of such as a "mixer," 99 66 a plain breeder," just as if he were a breeder of grades. The one, he who claims to be the fashionable breeder, emblazons on his banner, that is on his catalogue or advertisement, Bates," 99 66 pure Bates,' "" Bates topped," "Bates on Bates," or, as one man has it," Bates on Bates, after thirty years' experience; Bates, and no surrender." And, turning from his thin-haired, sterile, inand-in-bred, refined beauties, to his neighbor's calf-bearing, milk-giving unfashionables, he waves his hand in contempt, and whispers, "plain bred,” “unfashionable," "Seventeen cross!" And that does the business. The unthinking, untaught, and timid beginner, feeling how useless it is to try to stand before the tide of fashion, falls in with the fashionable crowd, buys a fatted, groomed, well handled red beauty at a long price. From her he expects to raise a superior herd of Shorthorns. But he never does. He takes her home: she never looks so well again, after she is off her oatmeal, oil-cake, and sugar. She never bears him any calves, permanent sterility being induced by high feeding and in-and-in-breeding. The consequence is, he is disappointed and disgusted, and swears off from Shorthorns for

ever.

So far has this sneering business gone, that breeders who are rearing scores of vigorous, blocky young bulls, are converting them into steers, because, for want of a high-sounding Bates pedigree, they are unsalable. And so strong is this tendency, that men are paying at public sales far more for a fashionable pedigree than for the animal attached to it. I witnessed the sale recently of a Kirklevington heifer for nearly $500, who had as many bumps on her thin, narrow back as the dromedary. She was without constitution, and in all respects a very inferior animal. With a plain pedigree she would not have brought $50.