The Days of a Man 1:1864 



Lme In 1862 Rufus bought a flock of about thirty 



0/ Dorset lambs of high grade. Leaving for the war 

 sheep immediately afterward, he asked me (then eleven 

 years old) to take care of the beasts, a duty 1 as- 

 sumed with great enthusiasm. In time I had tamed 

 the whole flock so that they would not merely eat 

 out of my hand but follow me everywhere, and to 

 each I gave a name. Drawing partly from my 

 nascent knowledge of French, I christened them 

 "i/oww^/^," ''La Noblesse,'" ''La Paresse'' " Daran- 

 court" " Caulaincourty' as well as "Columbiana," 

 "Wild Gazelle," "Black Gazelle," and the Hke. For 

 ten years — ^that is, until I left college — I sheared 

 the whole flock every year, and faithfully kept a 

 record of the amount of wool furnished b}^ each one. 

 Father in the meantime had bought a number of 

 Paular merinos, a breed with very fine wool. But 

 merinos are not immune to hoofrot, an infection 

 then current and easily transmitted from one sheep 

 to another by simple contact vith the grass over 

 which an infected animal has trodden. To this 

 disease the Dorsets are practically resistant. 

 Hoofrot In a youthful way I really gave considerable 

 *'" attention to the care of our flocks, and the first 

 scientific paper I ever published {Prairie Farmer, 

 1871) was a discussion of "Hoofrot in Sheep." In it 

 I described the pathology of the infection which 

 separates the layers of the hoof, causing the member 

 to become swollen and feverish, thus making the 

 animal hopelesslv lame. To my mind the so-called 

 virus behaved like a living thing, its "seed" trans- 

 ferable by contact. Such was indeed the case. 

 Every virus is a living thing, an aggregation of 

 microbes, though no one had so far demonstrated 



1:423 



sheep 



