6G 
Tlie Rot in S/tccp. 
Zabel, in their treatise on the disease — a translation of which 
will be found in the seventh volume of ' The Veterinarian,' 1834 — 
state that " it appears every year in Egypt after the fall of the 
Nile, and follows and keeps pace with the subsidence of the 
waters. In the superior j>arts of Upper Egypt it commences 
about the end of July ; nearer Cairo in August ; in the environs 
of the ca])it;il in October and November ; and during the months 
of December, January, and February, in the Delfci. It is most 
obstinate, and continues the longest, in the neighbourhood of the 
confluence of the waters. In Lower Egypt it lasts about 120 or 
130 days, and it disappears soonest and is least fatal when the 
rise of the Nile has not been considerable. Desolation and death 
accompany it wherever it passes. The Arabs say that this pest 
annually destroys 16,000 sheep in Egypt, and that its victims 
usually perish on the twenty-fifth, thirtieth, thirty-fifth, or fortieth 
day after the apparent attack." 
Without entering into further particulars of the ancient history 
or wide-spread existence of rot — the facts we have narrated being 
sufficient for our purpose — we pass on to speak of its various 
outbreaks in our own country. 
Periodic Outbreaks. 
The most reliable accounts we have met with of some of the 
early devastations from this disease are to be found in Ellis's 
Shepherd's Sure Guide, 1749. Speaking of " the great losses that 
several farmers sustained by the most noted sheep-rot of 1735," 
he says, " A farmer living in the vale of Aylesbury, who rented 
a farm of 165Z. a year, declared to me he had lost two flocks of 
his folding sheep by the rot between May 1735 and May 1736, 
and thus came to great poverty indeed, for he never could sur- 
mount the loss of 300 sheep in one year. 
" Another vale-farmer, living at Stutely, rotted his large flock 
by keeping them too long before he had them to market, and, 
v/hen he did, the sheep were so lean that he could make no more 
than 6c?. apiece of them, and at this price he sold 100 in 
Leighton market in October 1735, rather than drive them home 
again. He was sure they would die, and, dying under a lean 
rot, they would be only fit for dunging the ground with ; for this 
rot came on so fast, and was so severe and general a one, that 
thousands of sheep were not worth offering for sale. 
" This rot of sheep and lambs was the most general one, I 
believe, that has happened in the memory of man, because it 
rotted those deer, sheep, lambs, hares, and coneys, that fed on 
lands where rain-waters were retained on or near the surface of 
the earth for some time ; and as I have elsewhere observed, the 
