19G 
Report 011 Liver-Rot. 
especially at spring-tides, blocks the outfalls twice in 24 hours, 
and causes great difficulties in the draining of wide areas. 
Grazed on such lands sheep would soon be rotten and dead. 
The few lambs successfully wintered on drier pastures previous- 
to 1879 cannot now be risked. The unhealthy water grasses 
which have taken hold of the soaked land have much to do 
with rot. Where they have not had a good supply of dry 
food a great many cattle have suffered. We use a lot of salt, 
which 1 think is a capital thing and a great preventive for 
liver-rot. I have known several calves a few weeks old killed 
for veal with large flukes in the liver. These, I think, must 
have been born in them, as they have never had anything but 
milk. We used to have plenty of hares and rabbits in this part 
of the country, but few have survived the llukes. I do not think 
that ducks or geese prevent liver-rot, for on a part of this pro- 
perty by the Severn, on land which has always been subject to 
the disease, thousands of wild geese stop all winter and feed 
over the meadows. ]Much fairly dry ground, which used to 
afford capital grazing for sheep, and was suitable enough for 
rearing lambs, has caused rot during the two last seasons. I do 
not think that any cure will be found until the face of our 
pastures is altered by two or three dry seasons." 
On the heavier level lands about Swindon, off which water 
drains very slowly, the ravages of rot have been very disastrous, 
and several farmers have been entirely ruined. 
Wiltshire. — Lord Suffolk and Berkshire, whose estates lie in 
North Wiltshire, near Malmesbury, has paid considerable atten- 
tion to the disease. In his neighbourhood, hitherto perfectly 
free from such visitations, he considers that the losses in 1879 
were greater than in 1880. Cattle have not been frequently 
infected. Contaminated sheep kept on pastures and clover have, 
he believes, spread the disease broadcast. With the summer 
tropical rains to which we are now subject, few places, he states, 
are so high and dry as not to be wet enough occasionally for fluke 
breeding. On a farm recently taken in hand, consisting of cold 
clay soil, and chiefly undrained, the whole flock, numbering 130 
ewes, were attacked in the early autumn of 1879 ; 100 bought 
sheep fortunately sold off early in the year escaped. On the 
home farm, on a pervious limestone rock, 150 ewes and 200 
lambs and fatting sheep remained sound, although grazing the 
whole year on old pastures and having dry food only in the 
lambing season and salt occasionally. These Southdowns, 
however, added his Lordship, were not so well done as the flock 
which perished. During the summer of 1879, Lord Suffolk 
remarked that the home-farm lambs were on the wettest part of 
the Park where, if anywhere, they might have been expected to 
