TAB, SULPHUR, ALUM, ETC. 193 



shall aid in the same particular, and in preparing the soil for 

 better products. I prefer weekly salting, because it is just as 

 well for the health of the sheep ; because it keeps them tame 

 and ready to come at the call; and because it compels the 

 owner or shepherd to see them once a week, and consequently 

 to observe whether anything is amiss among them. He 

 should make it an invariable rule to count them if practicable 

 at salting. 



TAR, SULPHUR, ALUM, ETC. Some persons compel healthy 

 sheep to eat these substances by mixing them with salt, on 

 the supposition that like salt, they tend to preserve health and 

 increase thrift. There is no proof of this ; and we have every 

 reason to believe that nature would prompt healthy sheep to 

 eat these substances as it does salt, were they in like manner 

 necessary to the animal economy. Tar is an impure turpen- 

 tine, containing, however, some different principles, of which 

 the principal medicinal one is creosote. Turpentine taken 

 internally is stimulant, diuretic and in large doses laxative. 

 The creosote, which adds greatly to the value of tar as an 

 external application to old sores, has been used internally for 

 various human maladies,* but it is one of the last things 

 which would be administered in a state of perfect health. 

 Sulphur is laxative, diaphoretic i. e., it tends to produce a 

 greater degree of perspiration than is natural, but less than in 

 sweating and resolvent, or in other words, possesses the 

 power of repelling or dispersing tumors. Alum is astringent 

 in moderate doses, purgative in large, and does not possess a 

 property Avhich gives it a place among the internal remedies 

 of sheep, except as an astringent, and there it is inferior to 

 other astringents f and is scarcely in use. Of what use can 

 such a compound as this be to a healthy animal? 



If there is a practice in sheep or any other animal 

 husbandry, which more than all others lacks the shadow of 

 an excuse, it is, in my opinion, that of cramming drugs or any 

 substances which nature does not prompt them to eat, down 

 the throats of healthy brutes, under the idea that these will, 

 or can, make them healthier ; or under the wholly mistaken 

 idea that the medicines which are appropriate to particular 

 diseases, are therefore preventives of those diseases, or even 

 exert a tendency in that direction. On the contrary, by dis- 



* Diabetes, epilepsy, neuralgia, chronic catarrh, hysteria, etc. 

 t Both Youatt and Spooner concur in this opinion. 



