Report on Liver-Rot. 
163 
Mr. George Lepper, M.R.C.V.S., Aylesbury, informed me that 
liver-rot has annihilated the sheep in the Vale. Between Ayles- 
burv and Thame are scores of farms, two years ago carrying flocks 
of 200 to 300 slieep, where now not a sheep is left. He does 
not consider that previous to 1879 many of the Vale sheep 
had flukes, but there must have been parents for the myriad 
progeny wliich have since appeared. Protected under hedge- 
rows and tree-roots, and about pools, the eggs and other stages 
of fluke-life, Mr. Lepper believes, may be preserved for years, 
and come forth in destructive activity under the favouring influ- 
ences of summer moisture. In support of this view Mr. Lepper 
mentioned that in the park at Weedon, a few miles from Ayles- 
bury, which for two years had only been grazed by bullocks, 
sheep believed to be sound were placed in September. By 
December those killed for the house were found to be infested, 
and the whole were cleared off, and reported by the butcher who 
had them to be " all fluked." From August to November on 
low flooded lands rot was wont to be looked for, but these two 
years, Mr. Lepper declares, it has come at any period of the year, 
and on almost all land. He believes that flukes have been 
picked up from turnip-tops, on which, by the way, slugs are 
often found. Sheep run on some of the fluke-infested meadows 
within six weeks he considers will now show symptoms of 
disease. But the rapidity with which they are affected is 
variable. A hundred sheep from the same farm brought to 
Quarrondine were equally divided between two brothers, and 
were very similarly treated. One lot began to die in a month, 
and were nearly all gone before the other 50 showed anything 
amiss. Lambs three months old Mr. Lepper has known to have 
flukes, and a house-fed twelve-weeks calf, which had always 
sucked its dam, killed at North-Marsdon in the summer of 
1880, exhibited twelve lively flukes. The mother of this calf 
was fetched in with the other cows from the meadows night and 
morning, and doubtless brought to its offspring the dangerous 
cercarian form of the fluke. While this penultimate form is still 
in the stomach, turpentine, carbolic acid, and iron-salts, are 
obviously effectual to destroy the larva. Even in the earlier 
stages, when the fluke has reached the liver, such medicines, 
with dry food, undoubtedly arrest development of the fluke and 
its power of mischief. 
Many cattle in Bucks have died fluked, and many more have 
in consequence thriven badly. Even on the rich-feeding 
Quorrandine land, supersaturated and soured, as it now is, many 
young cattle during the winter of 1879-80, left out, as they 
were wont to be in favourable seasons, pined and died, their 
livers being full of flukes. Greater pains have been taken this 
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