2 



The Rot in Sheep. 



against which our sheep are protected in a great measure by our 

 insular position. 



The earliest writers on husbandry, as well as on the affections 

 of cattle and sheep, make frequent mention of the ravages of rot, 

 and speak of a variety of causes as being in operation to produce 

 it. Googe, Mascall, and Fitzherbert are among those of the 

 sixteenth century ; and Mr. Youatt, in his work on ' Sheep,' re- 

 marks that even Hippocrates gave a very faithful account of the 

 malady, " erring only in considering the flukes as hydatids ; or 

 rather his attention was confined to the hydatids, which are 

 frequently found in the liver of the sheep." 



Rot would appear to belong to no particular country ; and 

 perhaps there are few if any parts of the globe where sheep 

 have been domesticated in which it does not occasionally pre- 

 vail to an equal extent as in the British Isles. A fact of this 

 kind is of much importance, because it goes very far to negative 

 many of the views which are entertained with regard to local 

 causes of the affection. For example, some persons even in the 

 present day speak of the deleterious effects of certain grasses, 

 such as the " carnation- grass ;"* but this, like many other plants 

 similarly regarded, grows only in wet and undrained localities, 

 and, consequently, its presence there is but an indication of 

 dangerous pasturage. It may be affirmed that several of the 

 supposed deleterious plants do not belong to many parts of the 

 world where rot is met with ; vegetable products of a special or 

 particular kind being, as is well known, far more restricted in 

 their distribution than even the lowest forms of animal life. 

 Wherever, however, the disease exists, there the mortality will 

 be found at times equal to our own, be this in the eastern or 

 western hemispheres, in the torrid or frigid zones. 



Mr. Youatt observes that " many sheep are destroyed by the 

 rot in Germany. In the north of France," he adds, " they are 

 frequently swept away by it, and in the winter of 1809 scarcely 

 a merino in the whole of that kingdom escaped. It is destruc- 

 tive as far north in Europe as Norway, and even the most 

 southern provinces of Spain have had occasion to mourn its 

 ravages. It has thinned many a flock in North America, and 

 in Van Diemen's Land and Australia it has occasionally been 

 as destructive as on the worst undrained land in England." j 



* Discussion on Rot. Royal Agricultural Society, February 20th, 1861. See 

 also the Society's Journal, passim. 



" Carnation grass," correctly speaking, is a sedge, the Carex prsecox. It is well 

 known in the eastern counties. It has a creeping root like couch— Triticum 

 renews— and owes its name to the colour of its leaves, which are of bluish-green 

 or glaucous hue. 



A ' Sheep : their Breeds, Management and Diseases,' p. 445. 



