676 MANAGEMENT OF SHEEP DISEASES 



municated and death ensue." "The drench was prepared by 

 incubating the specific bacteria on glucose-beef-tea and 

 mixing with a little water, a second dose being given a week 

 to a fortnight later." 



Certain other means of prevention have already proved 

 useful in practice, viz., cutting or burning, at the proper 

 season, all excess of rough herbage, and the pasturing of 

 cattle along with sheep, especially during early summer. 



Affected animals, not actually prostrate, should be kept 

 in a perfectly quiet place, and, to prevent excitement, neither 

 man nor dog should be allowed to approach within sight. 

 When down, fat sheep should be killed at once : others in 

 store condition may first be bled, if there be brain affection, 

 then well fed, turned repeatedly from one side to the other, 

 and moved regularly to fresh ground. A small percentage 

 recover after becoming unable to walk. 



Double-scope or Death-scope is supposed to be a pining 

 disease, a remedy for which was discovered by a Yorkshire shep- 

 herd about the middle of last century. It is said to affect 

 sheep "on hard, poor, rough land, where there is too much 

 rough old grass, or on cold wet farms in high districts " in 

 the North of England (especially Yorkshire) and in Scotland 

 the animals most commonly affected being hoggs or sheep 

 under two years old. Attention is drawn to them by their thin 

 and unthrifty condition and want of growth ; and on examina- 

 tion the frontal bone proves weak or soft, and easily broken 

 in by a blow with the knuckles, which is the remedy believed 

 in by experienced Yorkshire shepherds, and by not a few 

 observant sheep farmers who practice it on many thousands 

 of sheep every autumn, in October or early November. The 

 supposed remedy is little known, and not much believed in in 

 Scotland, but John A. Willis expresses the common belief of 

 Yorkshire farmers when he says : " Sheep usually recover 

 if the skulls are broken in before the animals get very weak. 

 I have five half-bred hoggs feeding for the butcher now 

 (March 1905), and doing very well, that were so weakened by 

 the disease as to be unable to travel to the railway station in 

 October." 



George Metcalfe, M.R.C.V.S., Settle, diagnoses the 

 disease as " a form of anaemia which appears if sheep remain 

 too long on pastures deficient in some constituent, probably 



