BOOK VI. V. 1-3 



V. At no season of the year and least of all in the Cftusw and 

 summer is it beneficial to incite oxen to run ; for this ^J^u*t'1n°' 

 either relaxes the bowels or else often gives rise to o^en. 

 fever. Care must also be taken that no pig or chicken 

 slips into their stalls, for the excrement which falls 

 from them, mixed with their food, is fatal to oxen. 

 A diseased sow may cause plague. If this falls upon 

 a herd, a change of climate must immediately be 

 made, and the cattle must be divided up, in a 

 number of groups, and sent to distant places and 

 those which are infected segregated from the 

 healthy, that no infected animal may come into 

 contact with the rest and destroy them with the 

 contagion. When they are thus isolated, they 2 

 have to be taken to places where no herd is pastured, 

 so that they may not by their arrival bring the 

 plague there also. Diseases, however pestilential, 

 must be overcome and expelled by carefully sought- 

 out remedies. Sometimes roots of all-heal and sea- 

 holly should be mixed with fennel-seeds and, together 

 with flour of crushed and ground wheat, should be 

 sprinkled with boiling water, and the suffering herd 

 given a drench with this medicament. Sometimes a 3 

 potion consisting of equal weights of cinnamon, myrrh 

 and frankincense and a like quantity of the blood of a 

 sea-tortoise is mixed with three sextarii of old wine and 

 poured through the animal's nostrils. It will suffice 

 to have given the medicine itself divided into equal 

 doses of one and a half ounces together with wine for 

 three days. We have also found a sovereign remedy 

 in the root which the shepherds call consiligo.'^ It 

 grows in large quantities in the Marsian mountains 

 and is very salutary for all cattle ; it is dug up with 



" Pulmonaria officinalis, lungwort. 



145 



