o be seriously noticed,
the hair being scarcely cut and the skin unmarked. At other times the
skin will be cut through, partly or wholly, and it may for the time
cause sufficient pain to check the motion of the animal and induce him
to suspend his labor through his inability to use the wounded limb,
traveling meanwhile for a short space on three legs only. Sometimes a
single blow will suffice, or again there will be a repetition of lighter
strokes. In the latter case the parts will become much swollen, hot, and
so painful to the touch that the motion of the knee or the fetlock will
be sufficiently disturbed to cause lameness of a degree of severity
corresponding to that of the lesion. Following the subsidence of this
diffused and edematous swelling is sometimes the formation of a tumor,
either at the knee or the fetlock. This may be soft at first or become
so by degrees, with fluctuation, its contents being at first
extravasated blood, and later a serosity; or, if there has been a
sufficient degree of inflammation, it may become suppurative. The result
of the fault of interfering may thus be exhibited, whether at the knee
or at the fetlock, as characterized by all the pathological conditions
which have appeared as accompaniments of capped knee or capped hock. If,
in consequence of the force of the blow or blows, the inflammation has
been usually severe, a mortification of the skin may become one of the
consequences, a slough taking-place, succeeded by a cutaneous ulcer on
the inside of the fetlock or when the greater number of the original
wounds are inflicted. If the interfering has been often repeated it may
be followed by another condition, which has been considered in our
remarks upon other affections. It is a plastic exudation or thickening
of the parts, which are commonly said to have become "callous," and the
effect of it is to destroy the regularity of the outlines of the joint
to an extent which constitutes a serious blemish, which will be
permanent, and according to the degree of the aberration from the
natural and symmetrical lines will inevitably depreciate the commercial
value of the animal.

An animal in interfering may thus exhibit a range of symptoms which from
the simplest form of a mere "touching," may successively assume the
serious characters of an ugly cicatrix, a hard, plastic swelling, or
perhaps, as witnessed at the knee, of periostitis with its sequelae.

If a single and constantly recurring ca