Ch. XXXIX.] ON DISEASES. 497 



cotes or buildings with winch they may have been in contact, to wash 

 them with hme-water previous to tlie introduction of a sound flock. 



The sheep-pox so closely resembles the scab, that it is not known in 

 this country as a separate disease, but in some parts of France, particularly 

 in districts adjoining the Pyrenees, it is viewed as a distinct distemper, for 

 which flocks have been regularly inoculated : the mode of doing so, being 

 to place the skin of a sheep which has been infected upon the floor of a 

 cote into which the lambs, when about six months old, are driven, and as 

 they voluntarily rub and roll themselves on the skin, symptoms of the dis- 

 order appear soon after ; but they speedily recover, and are never a^ain 

 attacked, and where this is practised, it very rarely happens that ever one 

 dies out of a flock of three hundred. 



When taken naturally, the disease however is often fatal, and being con- 

 tagious, spreads extensive mischief among the neighbouring flocks. Its 

 attacks are more especially prevalent during winter, when the animals are 

 shut up in confined cotes and kept very hot. They become dull ; loathe 

 their food ; the head, eyes, ears, and gums, are swelled ; hard, white 

 tumours appear in the groins as well as under the joint of the shoulder ; 

 and, three or four days after these appearances, pimples break out succes- 

 sively in various parts of the body, at first on those situated on the naked 

 skin between the thighs, and where the u'ooi is short and scanty, until at 

 length the whole frame is covered. In this stage of the disease the animal 

 swallows with pain, and breathes with great difficulty; as it goes on, the 

 pimples enlarge and become inflamed, suppurate and burst ; the matter 

 which runs out mats the wool into hard lumps, which, when dry, are rub- 

 bed by the sheep, and the scarf-skin peels off in large pieces, full of holes. 

 The flesh of such sheep as have been killed while suffering under this 

 disorder, has a very bad taste, and is considered so unwholesome that cats 

 and dogs which have eaten of it have been infected ; and therefore the 

 precaution is taken of deeply burying the carcases of those which die of the 

 disease. 



When the disorder appears, the sheep are kept warm, well littered with 

 straw, and fed upon hay with a little salt; their water being given luke- 

 warm. Blood is also drawn by cutting the ear, and the cotes are thoroughly 

 fumigated during five or six days by burning the stems of garlick, which 

 occasions a great discharge from the nostrils, and in the effects of which 

 the shepherds have much confidence. Some also give to each a double 

 handful of white mulberry leaves, which they allege is an effectual cure, as 

 well as a preventive. 



When the distemper abates, whatever be the season of the year, the 

 animals are dipt, in order to assist the drying of the pustules, and to favour 

 the growth of a new fleece. After this, the sheep fatten very quickly ; 

 and It is worthy of remark, that the fleece which immediately succeeds this 

 distemper, is finer and more silky than any former or future growth *. 



The ybo^;•o< is partly contagious, and is supposed to be communicated 

 by the matter discharged from a diseased foot, and trod upon by sound 

 sheep. It is, however, more prevalent in low marshy districts than in the 

 uplands ; and chalky soils, or ground which has been strongly manured with 

 lime, are considered peculiarly exempt from its attacks : it is, therefore, 

 not uncommon to drive those sheep which are supposed liable to infection 

 into a pen strewed with quick-lime, as a precaution against the comnmni- 



* From a French memoir, communicated to the late Sir Jehn Sinclair, Batt., when 

 President of the Board of Agriculture. 



VOL. II. 2 K 



