Report on Liver-Rot. 
1G5 
Mr. E. D. Roberts, Selsoe, near Amptliill, farms 1050 acres, 
350 being clr_y chalk and gravel, mostly arable ; the remainder is 
low wet clay-land in about equal proportion of pasture and arable. 
He has had the farm for thirty-two years and never seen any 
flukes. The flock varies from 500 to 800 ; many are bought as 
stores in spring, grazed in summer on the pastures, in winter on 
the arable, receiving dry food and salt in boxes. Mr. Roberts 
lost 260, about half of them young ewes, lambing in 1880, and 
in high condition. The slaughtering of several made it ap- 
parent that the whole were infested. They managed, however, 
to rear their lambs fairly, but as the lambs got strong several of 
the ewes died. The lower lands, subject to overflow of brooks, 
doubtless produced the disease. The weakest sheep suffered 
first and worst. None of the old pastures, soaked as they are, 
with water standing in the furrows and low places, are now safe 
for sheep. No particular plants or weeds have shown them- 
selves in the pastures, excepting blue carnation-grass ; the finer 
and better herbage is, however, gone. The continued wet has 
increased the number of snails, and especially the small white 
slug. Thrushes and blackbirds have decreased, rooks and 
starlings are as numerous as ever. One hundred and twenty 
beasts from three to four years old have been more or less infested 
with flukes. Although they did not show any marked symptoms, 
they did not thrive as they should have done ; they died light, 
and post-mortem examination disclosed flukes and hardened 
liver. Large supplies of dry food, causing the patients to make 
blood faster than the flukes wasted it, checked the disease, but 
jew sheep badly fluked recovered. The great remedy must be 
drying the soft and rotten land, and getting the streams and 
rivers to carry away rapidly the almost tropical summer rains. 
Cambridgeshire has not usually suffered so much as some of 
the adjacent counties, although on many healthy farms pur- 
chased sheep have died. In Huntingdon, along the tortuous 
valley of the slow-running Ouse, from the flooded meadows and 
low ground about St. Ives, during the past eighteen months 
thousands of badly infested sheep have been despatched. But, 
€ven amidst unfavourable surroundings, judicious management 
frequently suffices to ward off disease. Mr. Frederick Street, 
Somersham Park, St. Ives, tells me that although his neighbours 
have had repeated serious losses, his flocks hitherto have been 
protected from disease, mainly by keeping them off suspicious 
wet meadows, penning them by night on dry arable-land, sup- 
plying them throughout the whole year with concentrated dry 
food, and using salt. 
Northamptonshire has not generally suffered so much as 
Bucks and some neighbouring counties. A great area of the 
