FARMING AND ROTATION OF CROFS. 70 



and, perhaps, as a contingency to Innnan life, 

 justice, sj^eecly and severe, is inclined to set the 

 seal of condemnation, and to brand such cruel 

 miscreants with tliat they so most unquestion- 

 ably deserve. 



To return to what I believe to ho tlie effects of 

 foreign and artificial manures, I must recur to a 

 disease which has attacked my pheasants — it is 

 nothing more nor less than the foot-rot ; and it has 

 a similar effect on their feet that the foot-rot has 

 with sheep. The toes are affected, they swell at the 

 joints and are very sore, and by degrees the toes 

 rot off; the bird can't walk, the entire limb from 

 foot to hip pines away, and the poor thing dies. 

 The foot-rot in sheep, taken in time, is very easily 

 cured, — the sheep can be caught and the foot sub- 

 jected, to constant dressing; but the pheasants so 

 affected can be taken Avith no sort of certainty, 

 and, therefore, the disease continues its fatal course* 



Strange to say, the longer we live the less we are 

 able to comprehend the cause of vegetation. In 

 the summer closely succeeding the heavy incendiary 

 fire which consumed the furze, heather, and trees 

 over the greater part of my manor, directly that 

 the ground was l^arc and cased in cinders, up 



