BOOK VII. V. 3-5 



condition with long journeys ; on the other hand it 

 should not be driven at an absolutely slow and 

 sluggish rate ; for, while it is not expedient to urge 

 sheep on forcibly when they are worn out by disease 

 and put a strain upon them, yet it is good to give 

 them moderate exercise and, as it were, to rouse them 

 from their torpor and not allow them to lose strength 

 through inactivity, and so perish. Next, when the 

 flock has been conducted to its new station, it 

 should be distributed in small groups amongst the 

 farmers ; for it recovers more easily when it is 4 

 divided up than when it is kept together, either 

 because the infectiousness of the disease itself is less 

 in a small number or because a more effective cure 

 can be applied more expeditiously to fewer victims. 

 These precepts, then, and the others which we laid 

 down in the earlier part of our treatise (to avoid 

 repeating here what we have already said) should 

 be observed when the whole flock is sick ; but if in- 

 dividual animals are affected, the following rules 

 should be observed. 



Sheep more often than any other animals are 5 

 attacked by the scab, which generally occurs, as our 

 poet says," 



When the cold shower and shivering winter, chill 

 With hoary frost, have pierced them to the quick, 



or else after they have been sheared, if you do not 

 apply the remedy already described, or if you do not 

 wash out the summer sweat in the sea or in a river, 

 or if you allow the flock, after having been shorn, to 

 suffer wounds from wild brambles or thorns, or if you 

 are using a pen in which mules or horses or donkeys 

 have stood; but, above all things, scantiness of 



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