220 



DISEASES OF SHEEP. 



the seeds of this disease will sometimes lie so occult, as 

 to baffle all skill, and that no man can with absolute 

 certainty draw a stock tainted with the rot. There is* 

 another method, to which men of inferior skill resort, 

 which is more easily acquired. They take a sheep's 

 head between their hands, and press down the eyelids, 

 they thereby make the sheep turn its eyeball so that 

 they get a view of the vessels in which the eyeball 

 rolls : if these are thin, red, and free of matter, they 

 consider the sheep as sound ; but if they are thick, of a 

 dead white colour, and seem as if there was some white 

 matter in them, they are confident she is rotten. This 

 is a pretty general rule, and easily discerned ; but I 

 think it is not so certain as when they are judged by 

 the back ; for in firm healthy lands the eye of a sheep 

 is far redder than it is in sheep upon grassy lands. And 

 in some boggy lands the eye is never very red, be the 

 sheep ever so sound, so that there you cannot so well 

 judge by the eye ; but when you see the eye of a sheep 

 a good deal whiter and thicker, and more matter in it 

 (I mean the vessels in which the eyeball rolls) than the 

 run of the flock amongst which it feeds, you have rea- 

 son to suspect it is not sound. 



'* There is another method by which I have seen 

 some men attempt to judge of the soundness of sheep. 

 It is a well known fact, that when sheep are rotten the 

 lungs swell to a greater size ; they therefore lay the 

 sheep down upon its broad side, and pressing the skin 

 in at the flank, up below the ribs, pretend to feel the 

 lungs. But if there is anything to be learned by this 

 I could never perceive it, and have seen some men, 

 who pretended to know most by it, very often mistaken. 



