300 LOUPING-ILL AND BRAXY. 



LOUPING-ILL AND BRAXY. 



Report hy Committee. 



As far as your Committee was able to ascertain, there was very 

 little louping-ill or trembling during the past season. With a 

 view to clearing up an important point raised by the report of 

 last year, viz,, that eradicating rank and coarse vegetation also 

 got rid of the disease, and to meet the objection raised by many, 

 that some of the "roughest" hills were most exempt from the 

 disease, Mr Brotherston made a careful examination, in July, of 

 Dalgleish, at the head of Ettrick, a very rough but healthy farm, 

 and Craikhope and Howpasley, at the head of Borthwick, also 

 rough, but very liable to disease, and the following is his 

 report : — 



" I found that, though the pastures at Dalgleish were ' rough,' 

 and also composed of the same species of plants as in the 

 diseased places, they were in very different proportions. On 

 Dalgleish the Juncaceas (rushes) and Cyperaceae (sedges) pre- 

 dominate ; e.g., Luzula (woodrush) Juncus, Scirpus, and Erio- 

 phorum (cotton sedge). There was very little land that was any 

 way likely to be liable to louping-ill, and that only on parts of 

 some of the steeper southern slopes. 



" From Dalgleish I crossed over by Moodlaw Loch to Craik- 

 hope and Howpasley, where I found the pastures very different, 

 the Gramineae (grasses) greatly predominating on the parts 

 liable to louping-ill. So that, in point of fact, both districts 

 may be said to be ' rough,' but the two are widely different, as 

 the predominating plants on the one are not subject to be 

 ergotised, while those on the other are so. Though this may 

 not properly be called confirmatory evidence, that roughness of 

 the pasture is a cause of the disease, still I consider it very good 

 negative evidence to that effect." 



Professor Williams also visited parts of the Moffat district, in 

 which it had ])een stated that louping-ill existed without ticks 

 being also present, and found that in general there were plenty, 

 though they were this year there, as elsewhere, very scarce. 



He further considers he has been successful in cultivating the 

 organism from ticks which had never been on sheep. 



He has also observed that Zlindel, V.S., Strasbourg, describes 

 a disease in lambs, in which an organism is found very similar 

 to that of louping-ill, and which he says resembles the micro- 

 scopic plant Pleospora Iierharum. 



Mr Thomas D. Gibson Carmichael, younger of Castle-craig, has 

 taken up the study of the Ixodes (ticks), and his preliminary 

 notes are herewith appended. 



