]54 IMPERFECTLY DEVELOPED LAMBS. 



enlargement. It might be applied to the parts with a little 

 less trouble in the form of an ointment, composed of one part 

 by weight of hydriodate of potash to seven parts of lard. 



IMPEBFECTLY DEVELOPED LAMBS. Aside from abortions 

 and premature births, lambs are sometimes yeaned of the 

 feeble and imperfect class described under the preceding 

 head, but apparently exhibiting no specific form of disease. 

 The plump, soft ones, and perhaps some of the others, are 

 frequently so colorless about the nose, eyes and the skin 

 generally, that they have the appearance of being nearly 

 destitute of blood. The small ones are often almost destitute 

 of the ordinary wooly coating. This, with their diminutive 

 size, the smallness of their bones, the remarkable delicacy of 

 their tissues, their general appearance of fragility, and their 

 feeble, languid movements, gives them so much resemblance 

 to prematurely born lambs, that the observer finds it difficult 

 to believe they are not so, until dates and other circumstances 

 are investigated. 



Far more of these imperfect lambs were produced in 1862 

 than in any other year within my recollection. Some counties 

 in New York lost twenty-five and others probably thirty-three 

 per cent, of their entire number, and the mortality is said to 

 have extended to a greater or lesser degree further west. I 

 saw large numbers of these imperfect and perishing lambs. 

 A few, in some of the flocks, were affected by goitre, but in 

 others there was not an instance of it; and taking all I 

 saw together, not five per cent, of them were affected by that, 

 or, so far as I could discover, any other specific disease. 



Any mode of treating lambs which are in the condition I 

 have described, so that they will, in more than an occasional 

 instance, ultimately attain the average size and the average 

 integrity of structures and functions possessed by good sheep, 

 is, according to my experience, wholly out of the question ; 

 and the bestowal of excessive care merely to preserve the life 

 of an animal essentially lacking in the above particulars, is, as 

 remarked under the preceding head, labor thrown away : 

 indeed, it is much worse than thrown away if the animal is 

 suffered to remain in a breeding flock. No good sheep 

 breeder would permit this. And even if the subsequent 

 structural development appeared to become about as complete 

 as usual, I confess I should still feel decidedly averse to 

 breeding from such an animal. In the case of a ram, I should 

 regard it as inexcusable. We cannot too jealously guard our 



