cleared, and to sow turnips upon it. After a full crop of vetches, land is usually in a good state for a succeeding crop. When the whole process has been well managed, the gross amount of cattle food yielded by a crop of winter vetches, and the turnip crop by which it is followed in the same summer, will be found considerably to exceed what could be obtained from the fullest crop of turnips alone, grown on similar soil, and with the same quantity of manure. It is useless to sow this crop where game abounds.
Spring vetches, if sown about the 1st of March, will be ready for use by the 1st of July, when the winter vetches are just cleared off. To obtain the full benefit of this crop, the land on which it is sown must be clean, and to keep it so a much fuller allowance of seed is required than is usually given in Scotland. When the crop is as thick set as it should be, the tendrils intertwine, and the ground is covered by a solid mass of herbage, under which no weed can live. To secure this, not less than 4 bushels of seed per acre should be used if sown broadcast, or 3 bushels if in drills. The latter plan, if followed by hoeing, is certainly the best; for if the weeds are kept in check until the crop is fairly established, they have no chance of getting up afterwards. With a thin crop of vetches, on the other hand, the land is so certain to get foul, that they should at once be ploughed down, and something else put in their place. As vetches are in the best state for use when the seeds begin to form in the pods, repeated sowings are made at intervals of three weeks, beginning by the end of February, or as early in March as the season admits, and continuing till May. The usual practice in Scotland has been to sow vetches on part of the oat break, once ploughed from lea. Sometimes this does very well, but a far better plan is to omit sowing clover and grass seeds on part of the land occupied by wheat or barley after a crop of turnips, and having ploughed that portion in the autumn to occupy it with vetches, putting them instead of “seeds” for one revolution of the course.
When vetches are grown on poor soils, the most profitable way of using them is by folding sheep upon them, a practice very suitable also for clays, upon which a root crop cannot safely be consumed in this way. A different course must, however, be adopted from that followed when turnips are so disposed of. When sheep are turned in upon a piece of tares, a large portion of the food is trodden down and wasted. Cutting the vetches and putting them into racks does not much mend the matter, as much is still pulled out and wasted, and the manure unequally distributed over the land. To avoid those evils, hurdles with vertical spars, betwixt which the sheep can reach with head and neck, are now used. These are set close up to the growing crop along a considerable stretch, and shifted forward as the sheep eat up what is within their reach. This requires the constant attention of the shepherd, but the labour is repaid by the saving of the food, which being always fresh and clean, does the sheep more good. A modification of this plan is to use the same kind of hurdles, but instead of shifting them as just described, to mow a swathe parallel to them, and fork this forward within reach of the sheep as required, repeating this as often during the day as is found necessary, and at night moving the sheep close up to the growing crop, so that they may lie for the next twenty-four hours on the space which has yielded food for the past day. During the night they have such pickings as have been left on the recently mown space and so much of the growing crop as they can get at through the spars. There is less labour by this last mode than the other, and having practised it for many years, we know that it answers well. This folding upon vetches is suitable either for finishing off for market sheep that are in forward condition, or for recently weaned lambs, which, after five or six weeks’ folding on this clean, nutritious herbage, are found to take on more readily to eat turnips, and to thrive better upon them, than if they had been kept upon the pastures all the autumn. Sheep folded upon vetches must have water always at command, otherwise they will not prosper.
As spring-sown vetches are in perfection at the season when pastures usually get dry and scanty, a common practice is to cart them on to grass land and spread them out in wisps, to be eaten by the sheep or cattle. It is, however, much better either to have them eaten by sheep where they grow, or to cart them to the homestead.
VETERAN, old, tried, experienced, particularly used of a soldier who has seen much service. The Latin veteranus (velus, old), as applied to a soldier, had, beside its general application in opposition to tiro, recruit, a specific technical meaning in the Roman army. Under the republic the full term of service with the legion was twenty years; those who served this period and gained their discharge (missio) were termed emeriti. If they chose to remain in service with the legion, they were then called veterani. Sometimes a special invitation was issued to the emeriti to rejoin; they were then styled evocati.
The base of Lat. vetus meant a year, as seen in the Gr. ἔτος (for Fετος) and Sanskrit vatsa; from the same base comes vitulus, a calf, properly a yearling, vitellus, a young calf, whence O. Fr. veel, modern, veau, English “veal,” the flesh of the calf. The Teutonic cognate of vitulus is probably seen in Goth, withrus, lamb, English “wether,” a castrated ram.
VETERINARY SCIENCE (Lat. veterinarius, an adjective meaning “connected with beasts of burden and draught,” from veterinus, “pertaining to yearlings,” and vitulus, “a calf”),[1] the science, generally, that deals with the conformation and structure of the domesticated animals, especially the horse; their physiology and special racial characteristics; their breeding, feeding and general hygienic management; their pathology, and the preventive and curative, medical and surgical, treatment of the diseases and injuries to which they are exposed; their amelioration and improvement; their relations to the human family with regard to communicable maladies; and the supply of food and other products derived from them for the use of mankind. In this article it is only necessary to deal mainly with veterinary science in its relation with medicine, as other aspects are treated under the headings for the particular animals, &c. In the present edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica the various anatomical articles (see Anatomy for a list of these) are based on the comparative method, and the anatomy of the lower animals is dealt with there and in the separate articles on the animals.
History.
There is evidence that the Egyptians practised veterinary medicine and surgery in very remote times; but it is not until we turn to the Greeks that we obtain any very definite information with regard to the state of veterinary as well as human medicine in antiquity. The writings of Hippocrates (460–377 B.C.) afford evidence of excellent investigations in comparative pathology. Diodes of Carystus, who was nearly a contemporary, was one of the first to occupy himself with anatomy, which he studied in animals. Aristotle, too, wrote on physiology and comparative anatomy, and on the maladies of animals, while many other Greek writers on veterinary medicine are cited or copied from by Varro, Columella and Galen. And we must not overlook Mago of Carthage (200 B.C.), whose work in twenty-eight books was translated into Greek and was largely used by Varro and Columella.
- ↑ Regarding the origin of the word “veterinary,” the following occurs in D’Arboval’s Dictionnaire de médecine et de chirurgie vétérinaires, edited by Zundel (1877), iii 814: “Les mots veterinaria et veterinarius étaient employés par les Romains pour désigner: le premier, la médecine des bêtes de somme; le second, pour indiquer celui qui la pratiquait; le mot veterinae indiquait les bêtes de somme, et était la contraction de veheterinae, du verbe vehere: porter, tirer, traîner. L’étymologie réelle du mot vétérinaire, ou plutôt du mot veterinarius des Romains, serait d’après Lenglet encore plus ancienne; elle viendrait du celtigue, d’où le mot serait passé chez les Romains; cet auteur fait venir le mot de vee, bétail (d’où l’allemand Vieh), teeren, être malade (d’où l’allemand Zehren, consomption), aerts ou arts, artiste, médecin (d’où l’allemand Arzt).”
