1910.] Summary of Agricultural Experiments. 493 



sowing on the quality of Red Fife wheat. The grain was milled and 

 baked, and the opinion of the millers was that February, March, or 

 April sowing seemed to make no difference in the value of the flour. 

 The superiority of Fife wheat to English wheat was estimated by 

 them to be in the proportion of 88 to 68. 



Experiments in Ireland. 



Prevention of Braxy and Louping III in Sheep (Jour. Dept. of Agric. 

 and Tech. Instruc. for Ireland, October, 1909). — The Report of the 

 Departmental Committee on Louping 111 and Braxy (see Journal, June, 

 1906, p. 135) contained a full account of their investigations into these 

 diseases, and pointed out that they appeared to belong to a group of 

 bacterial diseases with a peculiar characteristic. If the bacilli gain 

 access to sheep during a particular season of the year they multiply 

 and cause the death of the animals, but during the summer, and to a 

 less extent at other seasons of the year, they are destroyed by the blood 

 of the sheep, and no disease is produced. These latter animals are in 

 this way rendered immune, so that when the period of danger arrives 

 they fail to take the disease. It was suggested that sheep could be 

 protected against the disease by the administration of doses of the 

 bacilli during the period when they are immune to them, and as the 

 organisms are usually picked up by the sheep when grazing they were 

 introduced by "drenching." A number of sheep were treated in this 

 way with very satisfactory results. 



The Irish Department of Agriculture in 1906 began a series of tests 

 of the preventive method, continuing the experiments during 1907 and 

 1909. The experiments had unavoidably to be discontinued in 1908, 

 owing to the illness and subsequent death of Dr. Hamilton, the 

 discoverer of the treatment. 



The Department were extremely fortunate in obtaining the active 

 co-operation of many sheep owners, and great interest was aroused. 

 No final conclusion as to the value of the method has yet been arrived 

 at, though it is hoped that the results of last season's experiments will 

 warrant such a conclusion. 



The method adopted in the experiments is briefly as follows : — 

 For the prevention of braxy, a small quantity of pure culture of the 

 germs of the disease, in peptonised beef-tea, was administered as 

 a drench to each lamb in the month of August, i.e., towards the 

 end of the period when sheep are immune to the disease. A similar 

 drench is used in the case of louping ill. Certain districts were selected 

 where serious losses occur annually from the diseases, and a number 

 of flocks were drenched, each animal being afterwards marked. On 

 a death occurring among the drenched sheep a small quantity of the 

 peritoneal fluid was dispatched to the laboratory for microscopic 

 examination, to ascertain whether the animal had died from one of 

 these diseases. Considerable difficulty was naturally experienced in 

 ascertaining the cause of deaths in flocks roaming over mountain areas, 

 and some sheep that probably died from other causes have been included 

 in the mortality from braxy and louping ill owing to carcasses being 

 found too long after death for certain diagnosis. 



The total number of sheep drenched in 1906 was 848, and of these 

 ! 13, or 1*5 per cent., died from braxy and louping ill. In. 1907 4,276 



