Penrhyn Castle. 411 



Shropshire sheep have been another great fancy of 

 Mr. Davies, and he has won at the Royal North Lan- 

 cashire, the Manchester and Liverpool, the Yorkshire 

 and Cheshire, with his rams. For the last two or 

 three years he has given a prize for the sort at the 

 Yorkshire Show. The flock numbers ten score ewes, 

 and has been established from the oldest and best 

 flocks in Shropshire Horton's, Matthews', Crane's, 

 Evans', Smith's, and others, and the wethers are all 

 sold off as shearlings. Many of his rams went last 

 year to South America, Australia, and Germany, and 

 one of the latter took the first prize at the Leipsic 

 Fair. Horton's Lord of the Isles, Duke of Kent, and 

 General Lee (all Royal prize winners) have been used, 

 and did much both for size, heavy flesh, and wool. 



We did not care for the estuary of the Dee, its 

 countless small flat " lumps" of coasting vessels, and 



were slaughtered, and only 20 per cent, were left. It skipped some 

 farms and attacked others, and it would sometimes in its later stages 

 take one cow and return to the same herd for another victim at the 

 lapse of three weeks. Cleanliness was of no avail, and some of the 

 very worst kept shippons escaped. Mr. Davies' precautionary efforts 

 were unintermitting from the first. Every beast about the place was 

 vaccinated; hyposulphite of soda, beginning at 3lbs. and so on to 5lbs., 

 was mixed for four or five months in 100 gallons of water, and chlorine 

 gas was used night and day in the shippon. Sawdust was substituted 

 for straw, in consequence of its absorbing the faces better, and being so 

 much more easily removed. The cattle were never more blooming than 

 when they were turned out in the middle of May, for a few hours daily, 

 into a field adjoining the shippon and abutting on the high road. 

 There was no infected farm nearer than a mile, but at the end of three 

 weeks an Alderney heifer was taken ill and died in 36 hours. She had 

 no symptoms of illness about her except a slight discharge from the 

 vagina, and until the veterinary surgeon opened her he thought she was 

 ruptured. The bull by which she had been recently served was 

 slaughtered immediately, but there was no arresting the evil, and in 

 two days more nine or ten were down with it. Leonora, from Mr, 

 Jolly's, was the first decided case, as they found her one morning with 

 her back up, her coat staring, and her head and ears drooping ; but 

 Lady Best from the late Mr. Langston's, Minstrel from Holker, Heiress 

 from Mr. Hales', Cherry Empress from Mr. Logan's, and Water Girl 

 from the late Mr. Anthony Maynard's soon followed suit. They sick- 

 ened for three or four days, and on the fourth there was a strong dis- 



