82 



The Rot in Sheep. 



of their originators. At the commencement of the present 

 century a remedy emanating from a Dutch source was loudly 

 extolled, and even largely used in this country as well as in 

 Holland, but it soon fell into disrepute, following in this respect 

 those which had gone before it, as well as those which came 

 after it. 



Mills, in his work on cattle, after speaking of the employment 

 of certain medicinal agents which are too commonplace and 

 valueless to be here quoted, says that a Mr. Baldwin, of Clap- 

 ham, Surrey, found burnet to be a remarkably efficacious cure 

 for rot, " as appears from a letter of his published in 6 The 

 Repository for Select Papers on Agriculture, Arts, and Manu- 

 factures,' 1768." Mills adds to this statement the following: — 

 " A farmer in the north, in the autumn of the year 1766, when 

 all his sheep were so far gone in the rot that he did not expect 

 one of them to live the winter over, sent them into a field of 

 burnet, which in a month's time restored them to perfect health." 



After diligent search we have been unable to find any other 

 authority for the curative properties of burnet, nor do we believe 

 such a power belongs to the plant. All that could be hoped 

 for would be that sheep feeding upon it, especially when mixed 

 with good grasses, might be enabled to resist for a somewhat 

 longer time the inroads of the disease. 



Martin, a late Professor of Botany in the University of 

 Cambridge, in his Flora Rustica, 1792, says, " Burnet is com- 

 mon in high pastures on a calcareous soil. It flowers in the 

 beginning of May, and sometimes in April. The leaves, when 

 bruised, smell like cucumber, and taste something like the 

 paring of that fruit ; they are sometimes put into salads and 

 cool tankards." He adds that " Some years since Mr. Rocque 

 attempted to introduce it as food for cattle. It has one good 

 quality, which is that it continues green all winter, and affords 

 some food early in spring, when it is commonly wanted. But 

 cattle are not very fond of it, nor does it yield a sufficient 

 burden to pay the farmer for the expense of cultivating it." 



Several writers on agriculture remark that when burnet con- 

 stitutes a moderate proportion of meadow-hay it imparts a 

 stimulating property to the fodder, thereby rendering it more 

 suited for feeding with turnips ; but if burnet be cultivated by 

 itself and made into hay, the provender is coarse and unpalatable, 

 and rejected as a rule by the majority of animals. 



Most authors on the diseases of the sheep have placed their chief 

 reliance, however, on medicinal agents for the cure of rot; the 

 particular remedies they advocated depending rather on their own 

 preconreived notions of the malady than on any precise know- 

 ledge they possessed of its nature. We give a few extracts : — 



