EXERCISE AND GKBBN PEED NECESSAET. 223 



lier regular exercise in the open air, avoid, as far as may be, 

 all causes of mental or physical excitement, employ herself in. 

 the ordinary duties of her household, partake of nutritious 

 and digestible food, repudiate luxurious habits, * * * * 

 if, I say, she wiU steadfastly adhere to these common sense 

 rules, the reward she will receive at the hands of nature will 

 be general good health during her gestation, and an auspicious 

 delivery, resulting in what will most gladden and amply repay 

 her for her discretion — the hirth of a healthy child. * * 

 But if in lieu of these observances, the pregnant woman 

 pursue a life of luxury, 'eat, drink, and become merry,' 

 neglect to take Tier daily exercise, and prefer her lounge — 

 the case is entirely reversed, etc.*" 



I might swell quotations of the same tenor to a volume : 

 for such are the settled opinions of the whole medical 

 profession. 



Am I asked where the injurious effects of the close 

 confinement of sheep to small yards and dry feed have 

 manifested themselves ? I suspect that they have manifested 

 themselves in the prevailing and destructive loss of lambs 

 which annually takes place in our flocks. Why is it that with 

 better shelters and conveniences of every kind, and with 

 greatly increased skill as shepherds, the body of American 

 Merino flock-masters do not raise a larger per centage of 

 lambs than they did twenty or thirty years ago? I have 

 already expressed the opinion that eighty per cent, is still as 

 high as the general average, taking a series of years together, 

 though I know many small flocks in which 90, 95, and 

 occasionally 100 per cent, are raised. The American Merino 

 is a much larger and better formed animal than it was twenty 

 years since, and though it has undoubtedly lost something of 

 that locomotive power and energy which it possessed when it 

 was compelled to make a journey of eight hundred miles each 

 year in Spain, it remains a far hardier animal than the 

 improved English sheep, and it is less subject to parturient 

 difficulties and diseases.f Tet the English sheep rear from 



* Principles and Practice of Obstetrics, by Gunning S. Bedford, etc., etc. New 

 York, 1862, p. 131. 



t Mr. Tonatt enumerates among the defects of the Merino, "partly attributable 

 to the breed, but more to the improper mode of treatment to which they are occasion- 

 ally sviijected^'''' in. ^'^Am^ "a tendency to abortion or to barrenness; a difficulty of 

 yeaning ; a paucity of milk, and a too frequent neglect of their young." (Youatt, 

 p. 149.) The tendency to abortion is not greater in the American Merino than in the 

 English ewe: the former does not so often experience difficulty in yeaning : and It is 

 decidedly less subject to parturient fevers. It has, however, a greater "paucity of 

 milk," a greater tendency to barrenness, in the sense in which I presume Mr. Youatt 



