THE SHEEP. 189 



times cut a lamb the very day that it was lambed, when strong and 

 healthy, and that he never knew one do ill from the operation." The 

 proper period depends a great deal on the weather, and on the stoutness 

 of the lamb, and varies from the third or fourth to the fourteenth or 

 twenty-first day, the weather being cool or even cold, and somewhat 

 moist. It would be highly improper and dangerous to select a day un- 

 usually warm for the season of the year. The absence of unusual 

 warmth, and the health of the animal to be operated upon, are the cir- 

 cumstances which should have most influence in determining the time. 



There are two methods of performing the operation. The lamb being 

 well secured, the operator grasps the scrotum or bag, and forces the tes- 

 ticles down to the bottom of it. He then cuts a slit across the bottom 

 of the bag, in a direction from behind forward, through the substance 

 of the bag, and large enough to admit of the escape of the testicles. 

 They immediately protrude through the incision, being forced down by 

 the pressure above. The operator then seizes one of them, and draws 

 it so far out of the bag that a portion of the cord is seen ; and then, if 

 he is one of the old school, he seizes the cord between his teeth and 

 gnaws through it. This is a very filthy practice, and inflicts some un- 

 necessary pain. The testicle being thus separated, the cord retracts into 

 the scrotum, and is no more seen. The other testicle is brought out 

 and operated upon in a similar manner. Very little bleeding ensues — 

 and the young one may be returned to its mother. An improvement 

 on this operation, and which any one except of the lowest grade would 

 adopt, is to use a blunt knife instead of the teeth. By the sawing action 

 which such a knife renders necessary, the artery is even more conipletely 

 torn than with the teeth; and yet without so much bruising of the part, 

 and probability of ensuing inflammation. It is by the laceration, in- 

 stead of the simple division of the cord, that after-bleeding is pre- 

 vented. ^ 



Another way of performing the operation is to push the testicles up 

 toward the belly, and then, grasping the scrotum, to cut oft' a sufficient 

 portion of the bottom of the bag to admit of the escape of the testi- 

 cles when they are again let down. They are, one after the other, 

 pushed out, and taken off" in the manner already directed. The wound 

 is considerably longer in healing when the base of the bag is thus cut 

 away, and the animal consequently sufl'ers more pain. The first is the 

 preferable way, if the incision is made sufficiently long to prevent its 

 closure for two or three days, thus leaving an outlet for the escape of 

 the blood and pus from the inside of the bag. 



There is usually little or no danger attending the operation, and yet 

 occasionally it is strangely fatal. In a whole flock not a single lamb 

 will sometimes be lost; but at other times the deaths will be fearfully 

 numerous, the same person having operated on both occasions. Much, 

 probably, depended on some peculiar state of the atmosphere, of the 

 actual nature of which we know nothing at all; and more probably 

 might be connected with a disposition to inflammation in the patient 

 proceeding from too high feeding, or from a debilitated state of the 

 frame, and which had not been observed or properly estimated. 



When fatal disease occurs after castration it usually assumes the form 



