HOOF-KOT. 357 



justly received — as standard authority among the great mass 

 of the reading farmers of our country, I feel called upon again 

 to point out his errors on this subject. I may be allowed to 

 speak with a degree of confidence in regard to a malady 

 which has at f<yiir difierent periods attacked ray fiocks — 

 embracing as many as five thousand sheep in its different 

 visitations : and which has been, in every instance, fuUy and 

 completely extirpated. 



The f6llo wing is Mr. Youatt's description of its first 

 symptoms : — " The foot will be found hot and tender, the 

 horn softer than usual, and there will be enlargement about 

 the coronet, and a slight separation of the hoof from it, with 

 portions of the horn worn away, and ulcers formed below and 

 a discharge of thin, fetid matter. The ulcers, if neglected, 

 continue to increase ; they throw out fungous granulations, 

 they separate the hoof more and more from the parts beneath 

 until at length it drops oif. All this is the consequence of 

 soft and marshy pasture." Mr. Youatt attributes the disease 

 not only to "infection by means of the virus," but to particles 

 of earth or sand having forced their way through breaks in the 

 hoof, and through "new pores," occasioned by the over-lapping 

 portions of the horn breaking off. These particles " reaching 

 the quick, an inflammation is set up, which, in its progress, alters 

 or destroys the whole foot." He also attributes it to another 

 cause. " The length to which the crust grows," he remarks, 

 " changes completely the proper bearing of the foot, for, being 

 extended forward, it takes the whole weight of the superin- 

 cumbent parts. By the continual pressure on this lengthened 

 part inflammation cannot fail to be set up." In describing 

 the progress of the disease, he mentions the following circum- 

 stance : — " The whole of the inner surface of the pasterns is 

 sore and raw." * * * "In some cases, as has appeared 

 when the diseased state of this [the biflex] canal was exam- 

 ined, the malady commences here." 



The hoof is not softened but rather hardened by the 

 presence of hoof-rot, until its structure becomes to some 

 extent disorganized. In not one case in a hundred is there 

 any visible enlargement about the coronet in the early stages 

 of the disease. The horn, so far from first separating from 

 the coronet, generally adheres there to the last, even when 

 the whole bottom of the hoof' is gone, and nothing but a 

 portion of its side shell remains. The hoof never " drops off," 

 in the sense in which I here understand Mr. Youatt to mean 

 ■^that is, entire; though it sometimes gradually becomes 



