226 CONFINEMENT TO TARDS AND DRY FEED. 



ment which we give to the bulk of our American Merinos, 

 half a dozen geAerations would find them seriously degene- 

 rated in prolificacy. 



Occasionally there comes a year when double, treble and 

 even quadruple the usual number of our lambs perish. The 

 causes and symptoms appear to be the usual ones, but 

 aggravated and extended by an epizootic influence. I have 

 (at page 154,) described the appearance of the lambs, and the 

 singular degree of mortality which prevailed among them in 

 the spring of 1862. An extraordinarily deep snow fell in the 

 early part of winter, and it was replenished about as fast as it 

 wasted away until the opening of spring. It was remarked 

 that most of the breeding ewes clung very closely to their 

 stables — doing little more than rising to eat and then lying 

 down again. Those flocks most accustomed to close yarding 

 in many instances did not tread down the snow a dozen yards 

 from their stables during the winter. But the weather was 

 steady and cold, so that they continued to eat weU, and the 

 hay of that season was generally of good quality. Thus their 

 inactivity increased their fleshiness, and their fleshiness 

 re-acted and increased their inactivity. They generally 

 reached the spring in uncominonly high order. They 

 appeared to be well — but yet there were unmistakable 

 symptoms of a plethoric habit in the best fed flocks : and it 

 was in the best fed flocks that the loss of lambs was, as a 

 general thing, far most severe. 



Putting all these facts together, I have been disposed to 

 trace this mortality in lambs to the condition of the mothers 

 — the unfavorable condition being aided by an epizootic 

 influence.* Is it asked why a proportionable degree of 

 mortality does not habitually attend all unusual confinement 

 of breeding ewes, and why, in 186fi, it did not extend its 

 destructive ravages to Vermont, where the snow was equally 

 deep and laid stiU longer on the ground? When it is 

 explained why the directly exciting causes of various destruc- 

 tive diseases among human beings, lie comparatively dormant 



* Having, from inaMlity to fix upoa any descriptive or definite name, termed 

 this imperfect state of the lambs of 1863, which resnlted in such wide spread death, 

 " the lamb epizootic of 1862," (in some articles wUch I published on the subject in 

 the Country Gentleman,) several ■writers appeared to think that I intended to charac- 

 terise it as a contagums^ or ir^ectUrus disease. An epidemic, or epidemy, is defined in 

 Dunglison's Medical Dictionary to be " a disease which attacks at the same time a 

 number of individuals, and which is depending upon some particular constitutio aeriSt 

 or condition of the atmosphere, vrith which we are utterly ignorant." And he defines 

 epizootia (epizootic) to be "a disease which reigns among animals — corresponding 

 in the veterinary art to epidemjr in medicine." This correction is made smiplyto 

 prevent similar misconceptions in regard to the use of the word in this work. 



