An Essay on Colic and Bots in Horses. Written for the "American Farmer" by G. H. DADD, V. S., Baltimore, Md.

Entered according to Act of Congress, in the year 1868,

in the Clerk's Office of the District Court for the District of Maryland.

Continued from May number-page 327.

BOTS.

I have associated the subject "Colic" with that of Bots, because it often happens that when a horse is tortured with either flatulent or spasmodic colic, and stands with his head turned towards the flanks, some persons are apt to conclude that he is tormented with "bots," and in view of giving the so-called "bots" their "ticket of leave," the animal is compelled to swallow a juvenile apothecary shop, including pounded glass, more likely to kill than cure. I must confess, however, that the subject of bots brings me into "deep water," as the saying is, for very many horsemen, and farmers, too, have always entertained an idea that the bot is a mortal enemy to the equine race and is always injurious, and I often fail to succeed in convincing men of the real facts in the case. I hope, however, on this occasion to convince some of our readers that bots are not quite so destructive to horses as many persons have been led to suppose.

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licking, the ova adhere to the tongue, and are carried into the horse's stomach in the act of swallowing. The bots attach themselves to the horse's stomach, and are sometimes, though less frequently, found in the first intestine. The number varies considerably; sometimes there are not half a dozen, at others, they exceed a hundred. They are fixed by the small end to the inner coat of the stomach, to which they attach themselves by means of two hooks."

Let us now, briefly, enquire into the history, habits, &c. of some of the lower orders of parasites, and we shall perceive that the presence of bots in a horse's stomach is no deviation from the general rule which seems to obtain in all created beings.* In the study of animal physiology, we discover that animals and insects require the operation of certain forces in order that their peculiar vital properties shall be manifested. They all require food, water and oxygen; food, for the development of organized tissues; water, to maintain an equilibrium between the solids and fluids, and oxygen, for promoting various changes, uniting some particles of the fabric for special purposes, and disengaging others destined for excretion. These agents have to be obtained under varied circumstances. The number of the different species of reptiles known to naturalists is about thirteen hundred, and there are at least one hundred and sixty thousand species of insects. Among this vast assemblage of animate forms, a great proportion of them obtain food, water, and oxygen in a situ

genial to each species; each one of which exhibit great variety in organization and

Mr. Bracey Clark, who has paid considerable attention to the subject, informs us that 'bots are not, properly speaking, worms, but are the larvæ of the gadfly, which deposits its ova on the horse's body in such a manner as that they shall be received into his stomach, and then become bots. When the female fly has become impregnated, and the ova are suf-ation and at a temperature which is most conficiently matured, she seeks among the horses a subject for her purpose, and approaching it on the wing, she holds her body nearly upright in the air, and her tail, which is lengthened for the purpose; she approaches the part where she designs to deposit the ova, and suspending herself for a few seconds, suddenly darts upon it, and leaves the ova adhering to the hair by means of a glutinous fluid secreted with it. She then leaves the horse at a small distance, and prepares the second ova, and poising herself before the part, deposits it in the same way; the liquor dries and the ova become firmly glued to the hair. This is repeated by various flies, until four or five hundred ova are sometimes deposited on one horse; they are usually deposited on the legs, side and back of the shoulder; those parts most exposed to be licked by the animal. In

"it is a curious fact that numerous parasites do crawl over the surface of our bodies, burrow beneath our skin, nestle in our intestines, and riot in propagating their kind in every corner of our frame, producing ofttimes such molestation and disturbance as to require the interference of medicine. Nearly a score of animals that have their dwelling place in the interior of the human body, have been already discovered and described, and scarcely a tissue or an organ but is occasionally profaned by their inroads. Each, also, has its special or its favorite domicile. One species chooses the heart for its place of abode; another inhabits the arteries; a third, the kidneys.Myriads of minute worms lie coiled up in the voluntary fibres. The guinea-worm and chigoe bore through the skin, and reside in the subjacent reticular tissue. Hydatids infest various parts of the body, but especially the liver and brain. A little fluke, in general appearance much like a miniature flounder, lives, steeped in gall, in the biliary vessels. If you squeeze from the skin of your nose, what is vulgarly called a maggot (the contents of one of the hair pellicles), it is ten to one that you find in that small sebaceous cylinder several animalcules, ex

muscles or in the areola tissue that connect the flesh

tremely minute, yet exhibiting, under the microscope, a curious and complicated structure. Even the eye has its living inmates; but it is in the intestines that we are

most infested with these vermin."--WATSON.

habits-hence the necessity for that diversity in their geographical distribution which seems to surprise some of us.

of development; these are all fœtal hydatids; they increase in size until the parent sac is so distended that it finally bursts, and thus liberates a multitude of parasites, which, in their turn, undergo the same evolution, becoming, each, a parent hydatid, producing subsequent generations, which diffuse themselves over the whole body of a pig; hence arises that peculiarity in pork known as "measels."

His body, also,is sometimes completely infested with parasites known as Trichinæ Spiralis, dwelling in myriads in the muscles of the body; yet no indication of the presence of these worms seems to have been afforded in those instances in which the condition of the animal in whom they were found was known, during life. The intestines of the pig are ofttimes full of worms known as ascaris lum

Each species of reptile and insects, or at least very many of them, carry about with them, in their own organization, the fertile embryonic habitation for successive increase and development, and all are, to a certain extent, dependent on one another for vitality and food. It has been truly said that there is "life within life." Begin, for example, with the body of man, and we shall find that it is occasionally infested with thirty-nine distinct species of entozoa. These are not confined to a local situation, like the bots in the stomach of a horse, but some are to be found in the eye, bronchial tubes, glands, kidneys, urinary bladder, gall bladder, liver, intestines, muscles, blood, &c. There are also several species of entophyta to the number of ten, inhabi-bricoides, and these parasites are so prolific tants of the skin and mucous surfaces. So that man can boast of a greater number of living parasites, within and about his body, than we have as yet been able to find in the body of his servant, the horse; and if the former can carry about in the living citadel, such a myriad host of active, living parasites, often without much inconvenience, and he being the weaker of the two, why should not the horse, who is the strongest, be able to endure the presence, and furnish nutriment, for the few bots that occasionally locate in the stomach, and be able to perform ordinary work without inconvenience?

that naturalists have calculated many millions of ova within the body of a single female. Many of these perish, yet a part of them, at the proper season, are deposited within the intestines of the pig, who, notwithstanding, grows fat, and after passing from the hands of the butcher, furnishes savory meals for the lovers of pork.

Sheep also are infested with various forms of entozoa, yet it is very rare that those animals suffer any inconvenience from the presence of the parasites, except when present in large quantities. I might go on to show that every living being is more or less infested with parasites, and that almost all parasites are in turn likewise affected, but the examples here offered must answer my present purpose. The very atmosphere we breathe, and which serves as the purificator of the vital current

Some of the inferior orders of creation are the receptacle of immense masses of parasites. The grasshopper, for example, is sometimes infested with a parasite known as gordiusa sort of hair worm-which some persons have erroneously supposed to be a transformed horse-hair. Several of these coil themselves in the digestive cavity of the former, often penetrating its abdomen, thorax and cranium; the weight of the parasites often exceeding that of the body of the grasshopper, yet we often see and hear the latter skipping, jumping and chirping, notwithstanding this para-malcule; at times so numerous are they that sitic mass, just as freely, perhaps, as others not so infested.

Then consider the condition of swine; we frequently find in the porcine liver a vesicle, or sac, filled with fluid, apparently possessing no further, or no real organization; but examine it carefully and we shall find within its tunic, other sacular cells in various stages

the blood-teems with an innumerable host of living, organized sporules and-invisible to the naked eye-infusoria. The water which serves to quench our thirst, and plays so important a part in the economy of man and animals, whether it be in lake, pond, spring, or gully, contains crowds of parasites, or ani

several hundred thousand have, by means of magnifying lens, been discovered in a single drop of water. Yet such water is good and pleasant to the taste, and is not injured thereby, neither is it injurious to man.

Dr. Leidy states, that he has at various times purposely swallowed large draughts of water containing myriads of animalcule, with

weeks, and the common flesh maggot is generated by the million, in the course of a few hours; and as regards growth and development, the common flesh fly and the cater-stomach. Yet as some wonderful stories are pillar increase in weight two hundred times in the course of twenty-four hours.

Another reason why medicine does not act than the horse.

Remarks on a New Mode of Curing Tobacco.
Continued from May number.

closer the tobacco will sweat, and be much injured notwithstanding the fire. Here I close my remarks upon this branch of the subject, as persons purchasing the furnace will receive circular with minute directions for managing the same, amount of heat required at the different stages of curing, &c.

STRIPPING AND ASSORTING.-This operation is one of great importance, and should be done with care and judgment. The dif ferent qualities and colors must be separated carefully; the leaves in a bundle ought to be very nearly the same length, and the bundles a little above the size of a man's thumb; amoothly color, capied with a leaf corresponding in part the end of the stems. This give in neat appearance and adds to its value. After tying, the bundle should be opened and placed against the breast of the stripper, smoothed down with one hand and laid straight by his side. Tobacco should never be thrown in a common pile (as some do) and necessarily tangled, but ought always to be kept straight

I now come to one of the most important parts in the management of this valuable crop, viz: curing. This is usually done by putting it in the house directly from the field, 6 or 8 plants to the stick, and stick 10 or 12 inches apart in the building, trusting to the uncertainty of the weather to dry it. If the fall prove favorable a fine crop may be saved in this way, but if on the contrary (which is not unusual) the weather should be wet and foggy, from one-third to one-half of the year's work in pounds, which is very nothing of the loss burnt tobacco (as the phrase is) is much lighter than a sound article. Owing to the great uncertainty, which always attends the curing in the natural way, I adopted several years ago, Bibb & Co's Tobacco Curing Apparatus, with which I have been entirely successful, not only saving my whole crop from injury, but greatly enhanced if not doubled its value. The "Furnace" is so arranged in a barn, as to take up but little room, the pipes running so near the floor, the hands walk over them without difficulty, enabling the planter to fill every part of the building, except a small space near the apparatus.The heat is distributed very uniformly throughout the barn by means of two distinct sets of pipes-one set conveying the smoke to the chimney or smoke stack, and the other distributing hot air, drawn off from under a jacket thrown over the "furnace." This jacket answers the double purpose, of pro-and in like manner the bright stripper, throws tecting the tobacco from scorching overhead, and holding for distribution the surplus heat at the furnace-end of the building. Either wood or coal may be used in firing with this arrangement. My plan is to use wood (of any kind well seasoned) during the day and up to bed time, when two or three bushels of coal are thrown in, which insures ample heat for the night, the door of the barn may then be locked and the fireman retire.

The only care necessary on the part of the planter, is to see that the fireman does his duty. I am governed entirely by a thermometer, making a rule to examine this several times a day, and if not up to the prescribed heat, call the attention of the operator to the fact, requiring him to be more attentive. The time required to cure a houseful (being previously yellowed) is four or five days. The fire should be then suffered to go out, the doors and windows opened, and by the first or second morning thereafter (the night being calm) it will be sufficiently soft to remove to an adjoining barn or tight-sheds and closely stowed away. The planter may then proceed to fill as before. I would here caution those who intend using the furnace the coming season, not to put more than six or eight plants on a stick, nor put the sticks closer in the house than eight or ten inches apart, unless previously scaffold and kilned by the sun; in that case, six inches will be enough. I have found by experience if put

I arrange my hands for stripping in this way: those that I appoint to cull, after taking off the trashy leaves near the butts, throw all stalks containing yellow in one pile, all bright or red, in a second, and all dull in a third. I then place the other strippers, at the different heaps according to the care with which they assort and tie. The man who strips yellow, takes off all leaves of that color, and if there should remain any bright on the stalk, throws it to the one stripping that quality;

to the man stripping dull. By this arrangement every one has his own work to do, and the owner (whether at the barn or not) can by making an examination of the different lots, see who assorts properly. I have found some difficulty at first in breaking the "freedmen" to my manner of doing this work, but by carefully instructing them, and thus excit ing their pride, at the same time assuring them that under no circumstances, would I allow my stripping to be done in any other way, have succeeded in some short time to my satisfaction.

CONDITIONING.-I find from experience fired tobacco is much more easily conditioned than air cured, and in consequence, have abandoned the old system of sticking and hanging up to dry after stripping; as this very much disfigures the bundles, and in very damp weather not unfrequently changes the color, and the tobacco is otherwise injured from its exposed condition. First cover with tobacco sticks the tier immediately over head, and on this wind-row the tobacco in round heaps about four or five feet in diameter. The bulker standing in the centre, the tobacco is passed to him, three bundles at a time, by an assistant, he lays it down straight with heads out and tails in, forming a circle around himself, and so continue until the heap is about three feet high, and then draws himself out by a tier pole over head. Next he proceeds to cover (if fine) with a single course of in