DISEASES OF SHEEP. 321 



The disturbance of the digestive functions by this interference 

 with the circulation and distribution of the bile is general in its 

 effect. The digestive process is incomplete, and the food does not 

 nourish. Hence the result is starvation to such a degree as these 

 functions are impaired. All the symptoms, the staggering gait, 

 loss of fat and leanness, the watery effusions, and the foolish con- 

 duct noted, are attributable to this defective nourishment of the 

 animal, and the weakening of the functions of the brain. So far 

 all professional treatment has been at fault, unless it may. be 

 said that the proprietary vermifuges and tonics in use have been 

 found most useful. The manner of life of this parasite should in- 

 dicate to the veterinary the use of such diffusive remedies as tur- 

 pentine podophyllin, taraxacum, and sulphate of iron, or other 

 remedies having special action on the functions of the liver, and 

 that are absorbed into the blood, and so pass through the liver 

 in a most effective condition. It is all the more reasonable that 

 the professional practitioner should adopt some of the methods 

 of the specific compounders, and not think of these as quacks 

 as long as their remedies succeed, while they themselves fail disas- 

 trously to cope with this deadly tribe of parasites. 



As with all parasitic diseases it is the weak that go to the 

 wall. To sustain the strength, to get the lambs past the fatal 

 stage, is to be the effort of the shepherd. Thus good feeding from 

 the start, pure water infallibly supplied, to avoid a season of Win- 

 ter starvation, to provide shelter in bad weather, in fact for the 

 shepherd to do as he would wish to be done by, were he to 

 change places with his flock, should be the rule. If it costs a 

 little more to save a .sheep than to let it die miserably in the 

 Spring, after having been fed for the whole Winter, the cost is 

 returned with some profit, while a dead sheep is a profitless 

 property. 



THE BROAD TAPE WORM OF SHEEP TENIA 

 EXPANSA. 



This is the most conspicuous of all the tape worms on ac- 

 count of its comparatively enormous size. Its length reaches about 

 16 feet, and European writers allege that it has been found con- 

 siderably exceeding this, even up to scores of feet; the maximum of 

 the fertile imagination of some alleged observers mounting up to 

 90 or 100 feet. These writers, it may be observed, are natives of 

 the country of the noted story teller, the Baron Muncbausen, 

 whose observations, as narrated by him, certainly tax the wildest 

 credulity. We may reasonably rest on our own observations, 

 and on the comparatively gigantic size of our own worms, and 

 stop at the moderate length of five yards or about one-third of the 

 length of the whole of the intestinal canal of the sheep. It is 

 flat and thin, being about one-tenth of an inch in thickness, and 

 in width from one-twenty-fifth of an inch at the head to three- 

 fourths of an inch at the other end, from which the fertile seg- 

 ments separate as in other tape worms. The head is larger than 

 the smallest part of the neck, and about as large as the head of 



