AS FOOD FOn CATTLE AND SHEEP, 307 



have been fed with a fair allowance of good, wholesome, 

 strengthening food, supplementing turnips, notwithstanding the 

 unfavourableness of the season, they have remained strong and 

 healthy, and their offspring have been strong and healthy also." 

 The only other witness whom we will produce on this point 

 is Mr George Armitage, M.E.C.V.S., Hertford, who, in his 

 prize essay "On Abortions and Premature Labour in Mares, 

 Cows, and Ewes," published in the "Transactions" (vohiv., 1872), 

 says : — " Again the blood of the mother may be destitute of the 

 elements required by the foetus, and this condition is observed 

 in animals reduced to the verge of starvation by subsisting on 

 scanty or inferior food, &c. An exclusive diet of turnips has 

 been known to cause abortion in a whole flock of pjregnant ewes, 

 a result due to the small quantity of nutritious elements in com- 

 parison to the large amount of water. Such causes produce, 

 first, partial death of the mother ; she becomes anaemic, and 

 cannot give to the young that which she does not possess ; and 

 the latter, the least able to bear the want, inevitably dies, and 

 must be expelled if tlie mother lives." 



Mr Woods, in his lecture, refers to the prevalent impression 

 in many parts of England, as evidenced in the replies to his 

 queries, that superphosphate has the effect of producing less 

 healthy turnips than bones, shown by its inducing abortion and 

 death among sheep. In preparing the material for this paper, 

 I drew the attention of the lecturer to Mr Jamieson's remarks 

 on this pjortion of it, in the report of the Aberdeenshire Agri- 

 cultural Association for 1877-78 (p. 24), to the effect that the 

 evidences on which the above impression is founded are unsatis- 

 factory and inadmissible. Mr Woods has kindly furnished us 

 with the following remarks on this most important question, 

 regarding which he is so well entitled to speak. He says, " From 

 the testimony of four hundred sheep farmers in various parts of 

 England, who were each good enough to answer twenty questions, 

 and from my own personal experience and observations before 

 my lecture was delivered in 1877, I am more tlian ever 

 convinced that two kinds of roots are unlicultliy food for ewes 

 when in lamb, unless they are given in moderation and sup- 

 plemented by other kinds of food. Tlie roots to which I refer 

 are swede turnijjs, when grown with any kind of manure, and 

 common turni]»s when grown wliere a liberal aHowance of 

 supcri)hosphate has been applied to the land, but the most 

 dangerous of all manures is ' mineral superphosphates.* In the 

 answers to my ([uestions, it was shown that as many cases of 

 abortion and loss of ewes arose from the use of swedes as food 

 for ewes when in lamb, even when grown with rape cake, half- 

 inch bones, or farmyard manure, as frum the use of common 

 turnips grown from mineral superphosphates. So far as my 



