ull drink of iced water
may precipitate a miscarriage, as may exposure to a cold rainstorm or a
very cold night after a warm day. Irritant poisons that act on the
urinary or generative organs, such as Spanish flies, rue, savin, tansy,
cotton-root bark, ergot of rye or other grasses, the smut of maize and
other grain, and various fungi in musty fodder are additional causes.
Frosted or indigestible feed, and, above all, green succulent vegetables
in a frozen state, have proved effective factors, and filthy, stagnant
water is dangerous. Low condition in the dam and plethora have in
opposite ways caused abortion, and hot, relaxing stables and lack of
exercise strongly conduce to it. The exhaustion of the sire by too
frequent service, entailing debility of the offspring and disease of the
fetus or of its envelopes, must be recognized as a further cause.

The symptoms vary mainly according as the abortion is early or late in
pregnancy. In the first month or two of pregnancy the mare may miscarry
without observable symptoms, and the fact appears only by her coming in
heat. If more closely observed a small clot of blood may be found behind
her, in which a careful search reveals the rudiments of the foal. If the
occurrence is somewhat later in gestation, there will be some general
disturbance, loss of appetite, neighing, and straining, and the small
body of the fetus is expelled, enveloped in its membranes. Abortions
during the later stages of pregnancy are attended with greater
constitutional disturbance, and the process resembles normal
parturition, with the aggravation that more effort and straining is
requisite to force the fetus through the comparatively undilatable mouth
of the womb. There is the swelling of the vulva, with mucus or even
bloody discharge; the abdomen droops, the flanks fall in, the udder
fills, the mare looks at her flanks, paws with the fore feet and kicks
with the hind, switches the tail, moves around uneasily, lies down and
rises, strains, and, as in natural foaling, expels first mucus and
blood, then the waters, and finally the fetus. This may occupy an hour
or two, or it may be prolonged for a day or more, the symptoms subsiding
for a time, only to reappear with renewed energy. If there is
malpresentation of the fetus it will hinder progress until rectified,
as in difficult parturition. Abortion may also be followed by the same
accidents, as flooding, retention of the placenta, and leucorrhea.

The m