Animal Lore

Into the grand ballroom of Washington's Mayflower Hotel last week ambled two cows, two horses, five sheep, seven dogs, a covey of Congressmen. At the far end of the ballroom a tier of seats was jammed with spectators. On the sawdust-sprinkled floor, a man in white moved into a spotlight to pour several gallons of Epsom salts through a tube into a cow's stomach. The show was no circus, but a serious scientific meeting--one of the clinical sessions of the American Veterinary Association's annual convention.

Foreign Cattle. The veterinarians were worried over horses and cattle in war-torn countries. Dr. Cassius Way of Manhattan, an internationally noted horse doctor, told his colleagues that thousands of fine breeding and milk cows in the Low Countries had been slaughtered by the invading Germans. Next winter, he prophesied, hordes of animals will fall sick, may transmit many of their diseases to human beings.

Dr. Timothy P. White of the Agriculture Department's Bureau of Animal Industry, recently returned from Europe, where he spent five years, predicted possible "disaster" last week for the "magnificent strains of Jersey and Guernsey cows." Reason: the cows had been bred "pure" since the year 960. Now they have all been shipped to England, where they may well be lost through interbreeding.

New Streptococcus. Mastitis, or inflammation of the udders, disables more cattle than any other disease, costs U. S. farmers millions of dollars every year. Last week Dr. Charles Conger Palmer of the University of Delaware said that he had found a new kind of streptococcus, never described before, in the udders of heifers with mastitis. Sometimes it flourishes alone, at other times it grows along with Staphylococcus aureus, the germ which causes one form of mastitis in cows, boils and pimples in man. Dr. Palmer and his associates are now trying to discover whether it also infects human beings.

Buck Teeth, Cauliflower Ears. A popular branch of veterinary medicine is dog and cat beautification. Dr. Alan C. Secord of Toronto corrects buck teeth in dogs with wire braces, like those worn by children. Dr. Hadley Carruthers Stephenson of Cornell said that dogs may develop cauliflower ears by "scrubbing" their itching ears on the ground. Remedy: plastic surgery.

Cat Psychology. Dr. Glenn L. Ebright of Hammond, Ind. reported that cats who are frightened when taken to the hospital "become acclimated much more readily if they are kept in the same unit with dogs." If noisy, they "can often be pacified by placing a mouse in a jar where they can watch it."

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