1906.] ESSENTIALS IN FUTURE SHEEP BREEDING. 53 



has adopted those methods and has accordingly made a suc- 

 cess, while the American farmer that got them and endeavored 

 to breed them, and endeavored to care for them according 

 to the methods he pursued with merinos has made a failure 

 of it. But that is not all, that is not the worst of it. That 

 has been partly overcome. The American farmer has studied 

 English methods until today he is raising and furnishing his 

 flock with succulent food and giving them a little of the care 

 which is needed, and they are succeeding fairly well with 

 them, or did up until about nine or ten years ago. When the 

 English sheep came over without the Englishmen to care for 

 them there came wath them something that we knew nothing 

 about here, and I venture to say that previous to about twenty 

 years ago not a man within the hearing of my voice ever saw 

 a sheep louse. I have no reference to sheep ticks now. We 

 had sheep ticks here but they did not thrive very well on the 

 merino sheep. They did not like the mutton, I guess, but 

 they did like the mutton of the British breeds of sheep. I 

 do not know where the ticks came from. They were here. 

 There was however an unseen foe which we had not before 

 that time calculated upon. W'e could get rid of sheep ticks 

 because we had learned that there were certain classes of 

 poison which were not poisonous to the animal but were 

 poisonous to the sheep tick and the louse or scab mite. Dip- 

 ping was practiced to get rid of them, became quite well es- 

 tablished, until every progressive farmer was able to keep his 

 flock practically clear. After about ten years it was noticed 

 that the sheep were beginning to decline under a disease that 

 w^asmysterious. Sheep tick, lice, and the scab mite w^e could 

 get rid of, but as to the other many a farmer w^as fooled by 

 it and did not know what w'as the matter. I had a veteri- 

 narian make an investigation about fourteen years ago. That 

 was the first I knew about it. I began to hold post mortem 

 examinations, and others were doing the same. As the result 

 of those examinations we found a little infinitesimal worm, 

 the stomach worm, and we found some worms that were in 

 the bronchial tubes. Longer worms. We found along the 

 intestines little nodules. We thought for a time it was tuber- 

 culosis. Everything was going to tubercles along the intes- 

 tines, but under the microscope we found in these little nodules 

 a little worm, so small that we could not see it with the naked 



