316 THE TURNSPIT. 
The time during which this disease may remain latent in the system is extremely 
variable. Sometimes it becomes manifest in a few days, while in other cases the virus 
has produced no tangible effects until the expiration of several months. In one case, 
however, the disease made its appearance after the seventh month. Mr. Youatt suggests 
that if every Dog could be kept in separate quarantine for the space of eight months, “the 
disease might be annihilated in this country, and could only appear in consequence of 
the importation of some infected animal.” This opinion, however, will hardly hold its 
ground, for although all Dogs that are actually infected might be removed by this course 
of probation, there is no possibility of warranting that the disease might not again 
originate in some previously healthy individual, as it must have done in the first 
instance, 
TURNSPIT.—Canis familiaris, 
Just as the invention of the spimning-jenny abolished the use of distaff and wheel, 
which were formerly the occupants of every well-ordained English cottage, so the invention 
of automaton roasting-jacks has destroyed the occupation of the Turnspir Dog, and by 
degrees has almost annihilated its very existence. Here and there a solitary Turnspit 
may be seen, just as a spinning-wheel or a distaff may be seen in a few isolated cottages ; 
but both the Dog and the implement are exceptions to the general rule, and are only 
worthy of notice as being curious relics of a bygone time. 
In former days, and even within the remembrance of the present generation, the task 
of roasting a joint of meat or a fowl was a comparatively serious one, and required the 
constant attendance of the cook, in order to prevent the meat from being spoiled by the 
unequal action of the fire. The smoke-jack, as it was rather improperly termed—inasmuch 
as it was turned, not by the smoke, but by the heated air that rushed up the chimney— 
was a great improvement, because the spit revolved at a rate that corresponded with the 
heat of the fire. 
So complicated an apparatus, however, could not be applied to all chimneys, or in all 
localities, and therefore the services of the Turnspit Dog were brought into requisition. 
