354 THE INDIAN JOURNAL OF VETERINARY SCIENCE AND ANIMAL HUSBANDRY [ III, IV.

porosis in certain countries which was previously so puzzling. In South Africa,
for example, it was long held by workers who had carefully studied the matter that
the disease must be of a contagious nature because it was first brought prominently
to notice in racing stables in the Cape Peninsula—much more in some than in
others—and to have spread by contagion from these to similar stables in other parts
of the sub-continent. On the other hand it was common experience that, if turned
out to graze in certain districts, cases of the disease tended to cure themselves.

In the light of the information now available the explanation of this peculiar
incidence is no longer difficult, since race horses were in those days fed almost
entirely on the traditional diet of oats, bran and hay, made from natural grasses
or oat hay grown in South Africa, with an almost complete absence of the green
fodder and leguminous hay which might have corrected the dis-proportion of calcium
to phosphorus.

In Ceylon, and in India where cases of Osteoporosis have occurred, the position
appears to have been much the same. Cases of the disease have been most com-
monly met with among animals to which a high grain ration had been fed and it is
clear that, unless the content of lime was high in the other components, such a diet
would be of a high phosphorus low calcium content. In the Simla case the amount
of green stuff consumed was not sufficient to materially affect the mineral composi-
tion of the ration while any effect of a lack of vitamins on the causation of this
condition is discounted by the experimental work described by Sturgess, in his 1926
report before mentioned. It seems in fact that there is danger in adhering too
closely in foreign countries to the traditional British system of feeding equines
on a diet composed mainly of dry cereals, bran and hard hay, unless and until the
mineral content of locally grown food-stuff has been investigated. Moreover the
occurrence of this case of typical Osteoporosis points to the existence of a deficiency
of lime in the hay grown in certain parts of the plains of Northern India since cases
of Osteoporosis do not usually occur in countries where the lime content of locally
grown bulky fodder is even moderately high and the pony in question, though ade-
quately fed for the work performed, had not been given such a heavy grain ration
as would usually be fed to a race-horse, hunter or polo-pony.

                                           ACKNOWLEDGMENTS.

The author's thanks are due to the Director and staff of the Imperial
Institute of Veterinary Research, Muktesar, for furnishing references to the
relevant literature.