The Sheep-Scab. 5 



inent sheep men throughout the country, to issue 

 this little Handbook on the Scab, with the hope 

 that it may be of some use in the sanitary work 

 of removing this pestilence from our flocks. 



Its History and Nature. 

 The sheep-scab, or a disease analogous to it, 

 has existed in some part of the world from time 

 immemorial. We do not learn of its being men- 

 tioned in the Bible, but it was certainly well 

 known to ancient shepherds. Ovid, in writing 

 of a pestilence that prevailed in the Island of 

 ^gina, thirteen hundred years before the Chris- 

 tian Era, describes the falling off of the wool of 

 the sheep and their wasting away. Livy, the his- 

 toriah speaks of a disease, scabius, as being very 

 virulent among sheep, in the neighborhood of 

 Rome, in the year 424 before Christ. A most 

 graphic and exact description of the scab in 

 sheep is given by the poet Virgil in his Georgics. 

 All the early English writers on sheep husbandry 

 speak of it, and there is not a French, German or 

 Italian writer on the subject, who does not men- 



