TTie Rot in Sheep. 
127 
early evidences of the disease, says, " tlierc is no loss of condition, 
but quite the contrary, for the sheep in the early stage of rot has 
a great propensity to fatten. Mr. Bakewell," he adds, " was 
aware of this, for he used to overflow certain of his pastures, and, 
when the water was run off, turn those sheep upon them which he 
wanted to prepare for the market. They speedily became rotted, 
and in the early stiige of the rot they accumulated flesh with 
wonderful rapidity. By this manceuvre he used to gain five or 
six weeks on his neighbours." 
Dr. Harrison has also some remarks to the same purport. 
" Several graziers and butchers," he says, " with whom I have 
conversed at different times, having observed that sheep are much 
disposed to feed during the Jijst tJiTce or four weeks after being 
tainted, omit no opportunity of producing the disease to increase 
their profit." 
Ellis likewise, as far back as 1749, drew attention to the same 
fact, remarking, that " at the beginning of a rot, no sheep feeds 
nor fats faster than a rotten sheep, notwithstanding the plaise- 
worms multiply as the rot increases. This makes the common 
saying true, that no sheep thrives faster than a rotten sheep does 
for a time, and that no sheep decays sooner after it begins to sink 
in its flesh." 
The tendency to accumulate fat by a diseased animal may seem 
paradoxical, but the more we know of the nature and cause of 
rot, and of the physiology of the organ chiefly implicated in the 
malady, the less contradictory does the fact become. The phy- 
siological intricacies of this question, involving as they do a 
knowledge of the processes of digestion and assimilation of the 
food, respiration, circulation, and the maintenance of animal 
heat, forbid, however, in an essay of this kind, our doing more 
than giving a mere epitome of the subject. 
Physiologically considered, the liver is an assimilatory and 
sea-etory organ, as well as an excretory one, in all of which 
offices it plays an important part in the manufacture and purifi- 
cation of the blood. The vessel by which it receives blood 
for the secretion of bile — the portal vein — takes its origin from 
the capillaries of the chylo-poietic viscera ; and the nutritive 
materials of the food, apart from the chyle, which enter these 
vessels from the intestinal canal are consequently not conveyed 
at once into the general circulation, but first subjected to the 
action of the liver. " The blood in the portal vein differs 
materially from venous blood in other parts of the body. A mong 
other things it is deficient in fibrine and albumen, but contains 
more red corpuscles, and about twice as much fatty matter ; 
and in animals fed on farinaceous substances more sugar " 
(Kirkes). " And as, after having passed through the liver, the 
