The Rot ill Sheep. 
13o 
instances, even on the cold-clay, jj^rass-land farms of Middlesex, 
where diseased animals were kept tlirouf^hout the entire sum- 
mer without any material loss to their owners. Some few persons 
even ventured to select their ewes for breed inj^ from among them, 
believing that, as the sheep had done so well hitherto, tliey 
would still answer for this purpose. They had, however, to repent 
their temerity, for no sooner did th(; grasses begin to lose their 
goodness, and autumnal weather to set in, than the animals rapidly 
declined, despite all the care which could be bestowed upon 
them, 
Fairbairn, so often quoted by us, narrates an instance of the 
inutility of good food and shelter to diseased sheep at. the end of 
the year. He says, " In 1810 I put a fine lot of dinmonts 
upon turnips before Martinmas," — November 11th — "and 
although in very favourable condition, as 1 was beginning to 
suspect they were affected, and under the idea that meat and 
shelter would provide against every exigency, I sent them from 
my own farm to a fine, dry, well-sheltered situation in the middle 
part of Berwickshire, where 1 expended no less than 100/. upon 
turnips, but before the month of March there were few of them 
remaining, and 1 did not realise as much as defrayed the ex- 
penses laid out upon the turnips." A result of this kind was to 
be expected, and forcibly shows the folly of expending money 
upon rotten sheep in the winter months. 
It is easy to understand that the existence of flukes in the 
liver being associated with an almost continuous supply of 
watery or innutritious food, and exposure of the animal to a low 
temperature and variable weather, will the sooner produce an 
anaemiated state of system than when the opposite state of 
things obtains. The entozoa will of necessity now drain the blood 
of its albuminous constituents faster than these are furnished. 
Besides, their presence within the biliary ducts under such 
unfavourable circumstances will earlier lay the foundation for 
those structural changes in the liver itself which unfit it for the 
secretion of sufficiently pure bile to contribute to the making of 
healthy blood. Hence an additional cause of the quick progress 
of rot in the autumn and winter, more especially if wet weather 
should long prevail. 
In innumerable instances, however, and at other periods of the 
year, the two chief causes of mischief — innutritious diet and 
existence of flukes — are not combined sufficiently long for the 
former to play so important a part as to Y>^Qi\.\ice persistent dele- 
terious effects. We have a good proof of this in those cases of 
the engendering of rot by the pasturing of the sheep on wet 
meadows for a limited space of time, and hence we must look 
