OF LIMAX AGRESTIS, ETC. 577 



even on the dark nights of winter. It is possible to speculate as to 

 the virtues of salt as an anthelminthic, and to suggest that it may 

 act either by enabling a better gastric juice to be secreted, and so 

 giving the sheep a better chance of digesting the larval fasciolae 

 when swallowed, or by provoking a more copious flow of bile, and 

 so washing the young fluke out of the gall-ducts. This, perhaps, 

 is not the place for such enquiries. But it is a pure natural 

 history fact that localities rich in deposits of salt are favourable to 

 the growth and health of sheep ^. Pallas, in the wonderful eleventh 

 Fasciculus of his ' Spicilegia Zoologica,' dwells on this in reference 

 to the Steatopygous variety of the domestic sheep at pp. 65-67; 

 and with reference to the Argali, the Oois fera Siberica, supposed to 

 be the parent slock of Ovis aries, var. domeslica, he writes thus at 

 p. 12 : ' Omni vero tempore ubi possunt loca salsagine rorida quibus 

 universa Siberia abundat crebro frequentant, terramque sale foetam 

 cavant quod cervino quoque generi solemne est.* 



* [The importance of the recommendation of salt as an anthelminthic has now been 

 practically tested. Mr. A. P. Thomas has proved that common salt in very small 

 proportions is fatal to the redia and sporo-cyst of Fasclola, as also to Limnaeus trun- 

 catulus, which serves as host to the intermediate forms of the liver-fluke. Mr, T. P. 

 Heath has published an experiment in the 'Western Morning News,' Oct. 14, 1882 

 (cited in Mr. Thomas's paper in * Journ. Koyal Agric. Soc. of England/ vol. xix. S.S. 

 part i), in which sheep fed on permanent pastures with salt mixed with oats were 

 quite sound, whilst others to which salt was not administered were affected with liver- 

 flukes. — Editob.] 



jpp 



