222 



DISEASES or SHEEP. 



the best plan is to bleed largely, and give two or three 

 Bmart doses of Epsom salts. When it occurs in young 

 lambs, sweet spirit of nitre, given in the quantity of a 

 tea-spoonful twice a-day, is found to be attended with 

 the happiest effects. Tapping, or, as it is popularly 

 termed, stabbing, or sticking, to permit the escape of 

 the water, is the cure resorted to in South Africa, 

 when it appears in old sheep, after exposure to rain ; 

 but this ought never to be resorted to unless under the 

 guidance of a medical person. It would be much bet- 

 ter at once to kill the sheep. 



( 1 69.) Sturdy. As shown in the tabular view of the 

 diseases, in foot-note to paragraph (121), this affection 

 may be the result either of pressure on the brain from 

 an animal growth, or from the accumulation of a fluid. 

 Serum is in both cases the mechanical cause of the 

 symptoms, but in the former it is eliminated from neigh- 

 bouring parts by a hydatid, while in the latter it is 

 merely deposited in some of the natural cavities (the 

 ventricles) of the brain, owing to a congested state of 

 the spinal marrow, the result of continued cold upon 

 the back. 



Figure 2, Plate VII., taken from Rudolphi, exhi- 

 bits a view of the animal which gives rise to the first 

 variety of sturdy. It is the many-headed hydatid of 

 the brain, Ccenurus Cerebralis of naturalists. Like 

 the Cysticercus tenuicollis, already described under 

 the head of Rot, it consists of a thin membranous cyst, 

 full or otherwise of serous fluid ; but, unlike the afore- 

 mentioned animal is studded over with groups of little 

 velvety appendages or heads, each of which has a series 

 of barbs projecting round the mouth. Figure 2, a, 



