358 HOOP- EOT. 



totally disorganized and thus disappears. The disease never 

 commences between the quick of the foot and its horny shell, 

 as it would do if caused by sand or other substances having 

 penetrated through the hoof to those parts. The improper 

 bearing of the foot occasioned by the extension of the fore 

 part of the hoof forward, and of its side walls downward, 

 frequently produces some degree of lameness; but it is 

 that lameness of the ligaments, tendons and other tissues 

 in and connected with the feet, which a man would incur 

 by wearing a boot elevated three inches higher at the toe 

 than at the heel, and then additionally tipped to one side 

 or the other : but it bears not the slightest affinity to hoof- 

 rot. And when the hoof is thus extended and thickened 

 and elevated in front, Mr. Youatt is entirely mistaken in 

 supposing that the " whole weight of the superincumbent 

 parts" presses on this "lengthened part," or toe : it unques- 

 tionably presses mainly on the heel — as would a man's 

 weight with his boot elevated in front, as already mentioned. 

 I never saw a dozen sheep suffering under hoof-rot which had 

 " the inner surface of their pasterns sore and raw." And, 

 finally, genuine hoof-rot never "commences" at the biflex 

 canal, any more than it does at the knee or nose of the animal. 

 I could point out additional minor errors in Mr. Youatt's 

 descriptions ; but it is unnecessary. He must have written 

 them without much personal observation of the disease, or he 

 describes a difiFerent one — or hoof-rot presents essentially 

 different early symptoms in Europe from what it does in the 

 United States.* 



The horny covering of the sheep's foot extends up, 

 gradually thinning out, some way between the toes, or 

 divisions of the hoof — and above these horny walls the cleft 

 is lined with skin. Where the points of the toes are spread 

 apart, this skin is shown in front covered with soft, short 

 hair. The heels can be separated only to a little distance, 

 and the skin that is in the cleft above them is naked. In a 



* I can not, however, accept either of the latter explanations. Mr. Youatt too 

 vividly and clearly deBcribes the later characteristic lesions of hoof- rot — and which 

 appertain to no other disease — to leave any chance for the supposition that he was 

 describing a different malady : and I have no idea, after examining Continental, and 

 other British accounts of it, that there is any material difference in its diagnostics as 

 between any part of Europe and America, — except that among certain breeds of sheep 

 it is less virulent than among others. Mr. Youatt seems to me evidently to include 

 among the initial symptoms of hoof-rot, those of gravel, inflammation of the biflex 

 canal, and other scarcely named abnormal conditions of the foot, which come and go 

 without any connection with hoof-rot — which never produced it — and which do not 

 in one instance in a hundred, or five hundred, accompany it. Mr. Youatt, in tracing 

 the origin and progress of this malady, seems to me to have leaned quite too 

 heavily on the statements, or rather the speeulaliom of Professor Dick, of Edinburgh— 

 a writer of ability, but evidently a very unpractical one on the subject of hoof-rot. 



