162 
Report on Liver-Rot. 
have been badly rotted. On the plastic clays which run north- 
west through the county from Brill, west of Winslow, via 
Bletchley, to Newport Pagnell, very large and generally dis- 
tributed losses have occurred. Flocks confined to the gravels, 
chalks, and elevated parts of the Chiltern Hills, have, however, 
remained perfectly sound, indicating how closely connected is 
the prevalence of the disease with standing water and super- 
saturated soils. 
In August 1879, about Aylesbury, Winslow, and Thame 
sheep begun to fail, and bad livers became common. Often 
they were congested and enlarged, of a sickly yellow colour, 
containing small flukes, usually in cysts throughout the liver, 
but the fully developed flukes were not always free in the 
bile-ducts, and some of these earlier cases accordingly were not 
identified as liver-rot. As the autumn grass lost its nutritive 
value, and the weather became more severe, the mortality greatly 
increased. Thousands of in-lamb ewes lost flesh, became bottled 
under the throat, the caruncle of the eye pale and watery, the 
wool broken and readily pulled out. At any price they would 
fetch they were generally sold. In several slaughterhouses heaps 
of immature lambs were piled many feet high. Not one-third 
of the usual crop of lambs was reared in 1880. The total sheep 
in Bucks, which in 1877 had numbered 258,805, had receded 
to 195,764. In partial compensation for this great diminution 
in sheep the cattle had increased by 5000. Hares and rabbits 
have generally been infested with flukes ; many have been found 
dead, and some so feeble that they might be run down and 
caught. Butchers at Aylesbury, Thame, and Oxford, have 
assured me that few sheep in these districts, unless coming from 
the higher chalk ranges, are now free of flukes, and that the 
cattle, unless where they have been early housed and extra well 
done, are likewise affected. Several cases were mentioned of bulls 
three or four years old, which had always been in the house, 
having when slaughtered flukes in the liver. A useful short- 
horn three-year-old, belonging to Mr. Abbott, of Thame, was 
found to have the outside margins of his liver full of encysted 
flukes, and numbers also occupying the ducts. 
Mr. John Treadivell, Upper Winchenden, is one of the few 
Bucks flock-masters who have escaped without a rotten sheep. 
It is difficult to determine whether his fortunate immunity results 
from the elevated position of his holding, its thorough drainage, 
his own careful good management, or his liberal use of concen- 
trated dry food, and distribution of rock-salt. Such cases of 
exemption occurring in the midst of infected areas demand 
careful investigation, and might form fitting material for a 
subsequent report. 
