1G8 
Report on Liver-Rot. 
The frequently flooded tenacious lias clay and sticky marls 
in the neighbourhood of Loughborough present a black list of 
losses. Mr. David Aitkin, M.R.C.V.S., has informed me that 
the majority of the flocks in 1879-80 have been affected — many 
have been reduced to one half. Rot is no new thing in this 
locality ; 100 years ago Bakewell, at Dishley, is said pur- 
posely to have rotted his ewes sold to the butchers to prevent 
their being disposed of for breeding purposes. The Dishley 
farm is now principally used for dairy stock. At Tilton-on- 
the-hill, six miles from the town, are 6000 acres of poor cold 
land untenanted ; on the arable land not a plough has been at 
work for two years. In this district rot abounds. The Chan- 
worth Forest land, although stony, and now fairly drained, 
is poor and naturally wet ; the flocks at the best of times are 
diflicult to manage satisfactorily, and during the past two years 
most are seriously suffering. Large portions of land in this 
neighbourhood have been repeatedly and extensively flooded ; 
water has stood for months in many furrows ; outfalls and drains 
have become choked ; the land has not been safe for any sheep, 
nor even, as experience shows, for cattle. Although draining 
during fifty years has considerably limited the rot-area of 
ordinary seasons, butchers, veterinarians, and observant agricul- 
turists, concur that fully half of the sheep raised in the neigh- 
bourhood of Loughborough, during the last two years, have been 
fluked, and the proportion of those infested continues to increase. 
Mr. Warner Lacy, of Coates, keeps 400 sheep, and generally 
lambs 150 ewes. In 1879, amongst his sheep, chiefly kept on 
the lower grounds, he lost upwards of sixty, and sold many 
at less than 10s. each ; this year ninety have been sacrificed. 
The younger sheep, kept exclusively on the higher lands, are 
hitherto sound. Mr. Isaac Harrison, Tedbury, amongst his 
home flock, on heavy wet land, has lost many ; 160 are already 
gone, being double the mortality of last year ; but seventy 
lambs, which when weaned were sent into the drier Market 
Harboro' district, although many of them were from rotten ewes, 
are perfectly well and thriving. Mr. Harrison further informed 
me that from the strong land of high Leicestershire 1000 fluke- 
infested sheep have for months been sent every week to the 
metropolitan market, and occasionally the supply has doubled. 
Many, which if sound would have netted 60s., were then 
realising less than 20s. Mr. Roberts, of Hurst Farm, with his 
father-in-law, keeps 800 sheep ; although on stone-brash, said 
to be fairly drained, without stagnant pools, with no history of 
any rot on record, and the flocks sedulously kept out of flooded 
fields, the losses, nevertheless, reached 300 in 1879, and 200 in 
1880, and still the sheep are pining. It is the home-bred hoggs 
