PREVENTION AND TREATMENT OF SCABIES. 179 



yet no special machinery whereby proper inquiries can be 

 instituted, whenever whole districts are more or less impover- 

 ished by the operation of causes destructive to animal life. 



At the root of the present evil is that easily prevented 

 but widespread parasitic and contagious disease, " scab." 

 We have a law relating to the prevention of contagious 

 maladies, but it has not been enforced. We condemn a few 

 scabby sheep coming from the Continent, and permit our 

 markets to be infected by our own. One individual had 

 recently 100 scabby sheep. The animals might have been 

 cured in twenty-four hours and sold sound, but they were 

 neglected, and week after week seven or eight were sold off 

 in the public market in Boston. The results of such a 

 system are such as might be anticipated. The malady 

 spreads, and the farmers spend for the application of 

 mercurial ointment. One dressing is often not effectual, 

 and repetitions are common. Money, labour, and time are 

 squandered, and not only fleeces destroyed, but the lives of 

 sheep sacrificed. 



I have rarely been more interested in the study of any 

 disorder, than in the one which the Lincolnshire flocks have 

 been specially the victims of. The immediate causes I 

 find to admit of classification under three heads. Firstly, 

 the mercury absorbed by the skin, especially when sheep 

 are dressed more than once, tends to reduce the animal's 

 powers, and to prevent the system effectually withstanding 

 any morbid influence. In some instances it is the direct 

 cause of death, and, as usual, about the ninth or tenth day 

 after the application of the ointment. Attention has been 

 drawn at various times by scientific men to the fact that 

 ruminants, and especially sheep, are more readily poisoned 

 by mercurial applications to the skin, than any other of tbe 

 domestic quadrupeds. 



