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Prom Aghicultural Gazette^^ qvI-I^. S. Wkt'eJ. 



JwZ?/, 1897. 



The Sheep -Fluke. 



By N. A. COBB. 

 (With 1 litliographic plate, and 30 illustrations in the text.)* 



Introduction. 



Bathurst Experiment Farm, 5 April, 1897. 

 These opening paragraphs are to explain how this article came to appear 

 in its present form. 



For many years the author has given 

 considerable attention to the parasitic 

 diseases of man and animal. A few years 

 ago he was directed, in 

 his capacity of Patholo- 

 gist to the Department 

 of Agriculture of the 

 Colony of 

 New South 

 "Wales, to 

 make inquiry 

 into the na- 

 ture and his- 

 tory of the 

 various para- 

 sites of stock. 

 Accordingly, 

 under the 



auspices of the Stock Branch of the Department of Mines and Agriculture, he 

 undertook at Moss A'^ale, and later on at the Bathurst Experiment Farm, to 

 give as much time as his numerous other official duties would allow to un- 

 ravelling some of these complicated matters. In doing so he has always, and 

 as he believes justly, held up the difficulty of such investigations as a 

 warning against the expectation of early and important results. In regions 

 of research where the greatest naturalists of the pa.st have made but tardy 

 progress, where great and industrious minds applied through long and 

 laborious lives have succeeded in adding to our store of knowledge only here 

 and there an important fact, it behoves the investigator of the present to be 

 very cautious about promising anything greater as the result of his own 



*A11 tlie illustrations for this article were drawn by Mr. E. M. Grosse under tlie 

 author's supervision, mostly from photographs taken either by the author or by Mr. 

 (irosse. The lithographic jilate alone embodies the results of no less that thirty photo- 

 graphs of the living objects, and is a model of acuracy and completeness, showing as 

 it does tlie male-ljird perched on the edge of the nest, the female in the background, 

 the eggs and young, and a broken down last years nest. The view is from the roof of the 

 author's lal)oratory at Austermere, Moss Vale. That well-known landmark " The Gib," 

 near Bowral, Smiles away, shows thi'ough the foliage in the upper right-hand part of the 

 2)icture. 



A nund)cr of tlie sketches were drawn for the Toini and Connh-i/ Journal some years 

 ago and appeared in that well-known newspaper. 



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