90 STATES OF THE RIVER PLATE, 



is not fully organised, and, consequently, does not — taken 

 as food — meet the requirements of the animal organism. 

 Animals, therefore, fed exclusively on it, grow lean and 

 weak. In a season of much rain and cold, these defi- 

 ciencies in nutritious and mineral matters are augmented, 

 and animals are affected with purging and other ailments. 

 Low, banado-land herbage is particularly deficient at that 

 season in alkaUes and saccharine matters, by reason of 

 its constant washing. To correct this, and prevent the 

 purging of the sheep (or other animals), the use of salt 

 — common or rock-salt — is desirable. In Europe the 

 winter's grass is supplemented with turnips, mangold- 

 worzel, and hay. These roots — containing largely of alka- 

 line salts and saccharine matters, and good hay, that is, 

 well-got hay, or even chopped-straw — corrects the excess 

 of water and supphes an organised matter ; and in good 

 hay all the nutritious ingredients which constitute good 

 nourishing food are present. No flock of value, there- 

 fore, should be without a supply of hay (turnips and 

 chopped-straw are not at present available in this country, 

 their use being an ' economic ' of advanced farming). In 

 . the winter, they should never be turned out on the cold 

 grass pasture in the morning before they have had their 

 bite of hay ; and they should always have their ration of 

 hay to come home to of an evening. The deficiency of the 

 due proportions of nutritious ingredients in food has the 

 efiect of producing disease ; and, in many instances, para- 

 sitical disease (' Entozoa '), which, according to the nature 

 of the deficiency, attacks different organs — worms in the 

 intestines, leech in the liver, &c. This deadly plague — 

 leech, or fluke — ' Sobaisse,' for instance — is a parasite 

 generated by the sheep feeding on vegetable matter in 

 a state of fermentation, or partial decomposition, under 

 the action of the sun's rays, from which the alkalies 



