CHAPTER IV.
PROTRACTED FASTS.
The strongest temperance argument I ever heard was the incidental remark of a lecturing naturalist, that "it would be easy to name a thousand different animals that subsist on a thousand different kinds of food, but that they all drink water."
The question as to the most effective and most natural remedy might be settled with similar conclusiveness. Crapulent dogs can now and then be seen eating grass, and after a surfeit of green fodder ruminants evince a hankering after salt, but serious sickness prompts all animals to fast. Wounded deer will retire to some secluded glen and starve for weeks together. In the southern Alleghanies, where mineral efflorescences, mingling with stagnant water cause a disorder known as "milk sickness," the animals thus affected get "off their feed," and by rest and total abstinence generally contrive to recover without medical assistance in the course of a week or two.
