508 
Rickets, Bone Softening, and Paralysis 
gravel, or sand. This, as long as it remains in its natural 
condition, may be regarded as a fairly healthy sheep walk ; 
when broken, however, by the plough, and treated with an 
application of caustic lime, it is at once converted into a 
condition the opposite of healthy. Immediately attendant 
on this treatment the chief affections, and the most inexplicable 
ones which make their appearance amongst sheep confined to 
these soils, are this transverse paralysis or weakness of the 
loins in lambs, and bone fragility in young sheep. Whether 
aged sheep might contract the latter affection if retained long 
enough upon these situations, and under the other conditions 
where paralysis is observed in lambs whose dams have been 
fed from the roots grown there, I am not able positively to state. 
They may certainly be folded upon these lands, and consume 
the roots grown there for lengthened periods, without exhibiting 
untoward symptoms. The same treatment may not be carried 
out with parturient or great ewes during any stage of gestation, 
but particularly in the middle and latter, without entailing 
serious results in a large proportion of the lambs born of these 
ewes, in the form of weakness of the posterior extremities, or 
complete paralysis. 
The prevalence of this paralysis and its fatality bear a 
direct relation to the treatment which the soil has received by 
being stirred and dressed with lime, the power of inducing 
the affection gradually becoming less as the period from the 
tillage and liming is increased. In some districts there is 
a danger of confounding this paralysis of lambs with other affec- 
tions of the nervous system which possess some resemblance 
to it. Of these the chief are " Louping ill" and a form of 
" Sturdij " or " Gid" where the parasitic cyst is situated in 
the posterior part of the brain substance. From both of these, 
however, it is easily enough distinguished. From the mani- 
festation of sturdy, to which I refer, it may be differentiated by 
the absence of convulsions, the possession of consciousfiess, and 
the disposition of this paralysis to exhibit truly enzootic 
characters, i.e. seizing upon a number of animals of the same 
flock in the same situation, together with the absence on after- 
death examination, of any cystic parasite in the nerve centres, 
brain, or spinal cord. 
From " loupirif/ ill " it is distinguished by its strict confine- 
ment to the lambs, the ewes not being affected, together with 
the absence of convulsions, its steady progress when once 
appearing in a flock by its not being confined or influenced in 
its outbreaks by periods of the year, and by the absence of ticks 
on the sufferers. 
Causation. — This particular paralysis, or defective power 
