REAL CAUSES OF ROT. 



'213 



causes being in this way common to the whole flock, 

 at contagious properties have been ascribed to rot, 

 having been observed, from the time of Virgil, to 

 break out in many animals at once.* 



The reason of so many different things having, from 

 first to last, been reckoned capable of producing this 

 disease, appears to lie in the known fact, that if a sheep 

 be exposed to any of the above depressing agents, rot, 

 if the animal be as yet untainted, will not, at the mo- 

 ment, shew itself ; but a chain of morbid actions will 

 in all probability then commence, and, being beyond 

 the ken of ordinary observers, will pass unheeded, 

 till some slight mismanagement in food or shelter, 

 hastens their progress, and renders them apparent to 

 the plainest understanding. The final symptoms of 

 rot may thus occur on any kind of pasture, and the 

 scene of the catastrophe will incur a stigma which ought 

 to be attacheil to herbage which the sheep have con- 

 sumed at some distant place or date. 



Bad food is justly regarded as one of the most com- 

 mon causes of rot, and ranks, in my estimation, next to 

 cold and wet, in its power of producing it. I shall 

 only remark, on this point, that of all the food on which 

 sheep can possibly be kept, none is known to act so 

 deleteriously as grass which has sprouted quickly. Rot 

 is well known to occur most frequently on land which 

 has been irrigated during summer, for at this season 



•' Nor oftener are the floods disturb'd with wind 

 Than sheep with rots ; nor doth the sickness i.iid 

 OiiB to destroy, but suddenly doth fall 

 On root and branch, stuck and original.' 



Firfirs Gfor^ic^, l>ib III. 



