s membranes the danger of putrid poisoning may be
obviated by injecting the antiseptic solution advised in the paragraph
above.

ABORTION (SLINKING THE CALF).

Technically, abortion is the term used for the expulsion of the offspring
before it can live out of the womb. Its expulsion before the normal time,
but after it is capable of an independent existence, is premature
parturition. In the cow this may be after seven and one-half months of
pregnancy. Earl Spencer failed to raise any calf born before the two
hundred and forty-second day. Dairymen use the term abortion for the
expulsion of the product of conception at any time before the completion of
the full period of a normal pregnancy, and in this sense it will be used in
this article.

Abortion in cows is either contagious or noncontagious. It does not follow
that the contagium is the sole cause in every case in which it is present.
We know that the organized germs (microbes) of contagion vary much in
potency at different times, and that the animal system also varies in
susceptibility to their attack. The germ may therefore be present in a herd
without any manifest injury, its disease-producing power having for the
time abated considerably, or the whole herd being in a condition of
comparative insusceptibility. At other times the same germ may have become
so virulent that almost all pregnant cows succumb to its force, or the herd
may have been subjected to other causes of abortion which, though of
themselves powerless to actually cause abortion, may yet so predispose the
animals that even the weaker germ will operate with destructive effect. In
dealing with this disease, therefore, it is the part of wisdom not to rest
satisfied with the discovery and removal of one specific cause, but rather
to try to find every existent cause and to obtain a remedy by correcting
all the harmful conditions.

NONCONTAGIOUS ABORTION.

As abortion most frequently occurs at those three-week intervals at which
the cow would have been in heat if nonpregnant, we may assume a
predisposition at such times owing to a periodicity in the nervous system
and functions. Poor condition, weakness, and a too watery state of the
blood is often a predisposing cause. This in its turn may result from poor
or insufficient feed, from the excessive drain upon the udder while bearing
the calf, from the use of feed deficient in certain essential elements,
like the nitrogenous constituents or albumino