Treatment of Grass Land for Elimination of Disease. 73 



The best known flocks in America at the present time, are 

 the Tranquility Flock of New Jersey, The Fillmore Farms, 

 Bennington, Vermont, U.S.A., Mr. Wing's of Ohio, Messrs. 

 Gifford and Nash's of Indiana, Mr. Henderson's of Pennsylvania, 

 Mr. Arbuckle's of Virginia, and Mr, Harding's of Ontario. 

 There are also other flocks in Virginia and Georgia. 



Thomas H. Ensor, F.H.A.S., F.A.I. 



Dorchester, 



Dorset. 



THE TREATMENT OF GRASS LAND WITH 



A VIEW TO THE ELIMINATION OF 



DISEASE. 



The selection of this title for an article to appear in ' the 

 present issue of this Journal may, of itself, be taken as evi- 

 dence of the importance with which the subject is generally 

 regarded, and to some extent, suggestive of the difficulties 

 surrounding it. A keen perception of the magnitude of 

 the latter did not fail to arouse feelings of diffidence in 

 acceding to the request to make the contribution, for while 

 it was fully recognised that loss from disease amongst grazing 

 animals is a very serious deterrent to profitable agriculture, 

 which unfortunately the curative measures, now known, 

 cannot be depended on to materially mitigate, the writer was 

 fully conscious of the fact that elimination of disease by 

 treatment of grass land involves consideration of many other 

 matters than the application of material to the heritage or 

 surface of the soil, which the superscription might suggest. 

 Indeed, at the outset it must be confessed that our know- 

 ledge of the effects of such applications is so limited and 

 lacking in precision that necessarily attention must be mainly 

 directed to other aspects of the situation, as in the nature of 

 things the elimination of disease must largely depend on 

 prevention of its occurrence in animals, which provide the 

 seeds and seed beds on which its existence depends. 



There appears to be a general and growing impression that, 

 apart from those scheduled under the Contagious Diseases 

 (Animals) Act, diseases among grazing animals are becoming 

 increasingly prevalent. For the foundation of precise opinion 

 on this point no statistics are available, though it cannot be 

 questioned that at the present time there is much more 

 than formerly heard of losses limited and extensive. With 

 falling })rices of wheat has come the expansion of the area 

 of more or less permanent pasture. Since 1882 the extent 



