lo Feb., 1909.] Diseases of Farm Animals. 105 



accidental, mechanical and not toxic. This condition ha& often been mis- 

 taken for poisoning, and explains, I think, the very conflicting views that 

 have been expressed on the subject of this paper. 



" Messrs. Bailey and Gordon's work gives the following botanical 

 description of the plant: — 



" Euphorbia Dnimmondii, caustic creeper. A prostrate or diffuse, 

 milky, much-branched plant, smooth, and of a light-grey colour, or here 

 and there stained with red ; the leaves oblong or nearly round, opposite 

 on the stems, obtuse or notched at the end, about \ inch long. Flower 

 heads small, on short stalks in the axils of the leaves. Capsule smooth, 

 the seeds rough. This little plant is met with throughout Australia, in- 

 cluding Tasmania. 



" I found the plant freely distributed over a very wide area in the 

 Lachlan and Riverina, and noticed it cropped short, unless it was pro- 

 tected from sheep by a fence, as in a garden, on the railway, in a horse 

 paddock, &c. ; in such situations the plant is conspicuous, growing a foot 

 high, being very hardy in drought, and in slight rain it grows rapidly ; 

 ^\'here sheep eat it, the plant grows close along the ground almost like a 

 creeper. 



" Near Urana a large patch of the plant grows on the stock route, 

 where only very scanty herbage is seen for miles. Mr. Brett informed 

 me that in October, just after rain, a drover arrived at this patch with 

 3,000 sheep that had been starving for three or four davs previously ; 

 they stopped and ate up the patch of Euphorbia, and walked a mile or 

 so on to Urana Common to water and camp. In three hours about 1,500 

 were lying ill over a space of ground, and 229 died before mornmg. 

 Symptoms : Distended stomach, staggering gait, frothy discharge from 

 nose and mouth, unable to rise when down. The 1,280 sufferers that 

 survived continued to travel next day, with the others that were unaffected. 

 This instance is valuable, because the number that died was small, and 

 the recoveries being so large and so quick remove all suspicion of poison. 

 For years before and since that occurred, many thousands of sheep have 

 travelled the same road without ill effects. 



Experiments on Sheep with the Plants. 



" I took the opportunity of investigating the effect of this plant, on 

 sheep, while on Yanko Station in March, 1886, by carrying out a few 

 simple experiments. 



" To the courtesy of Mr. Carse, I was indebted for the supply of 

 sheep from a healthy flock, in which no disease had occurred, and for 

 milk-weed, known as spurge wort, or better as Euphorbia Dnimmondii, 

 growing plentifully in the horse paddock, and for assistance of every kind 

 that I could possibly require for carrying out these experiments, which 

 were greatly facilitated by my obliging assistant, Mr. Brett, Inspector of 

 Stock. Both these gentlemen at that time believed the plant to be 

 poisonous. 



" We put up seven sheep of various ages, and I carefully examined 

 the conditions and health of each, the skin, the conjuntiva, age, sex, pulse, 

 tem.perature taken by thermometer introduced three minutes, blood ex- 

 amined under a microscope for baccilli, noting the state of their evacua- 

 tions, and found them in perfectly good health. In most of the subjects 

 the respirations were panting, and the heart's action too excited to be of 

 value. The weather was hot and dry% temperature ranging from 80 

 degrees to 97 degrees in the' shade. 



