200 
Report on Livcr-Rot. 
been stinted out of twelve months' growth, and wasted much 
good food. Hares and rabbits in Gloucestershire, Leicester- 
shire, and other counties, have been decimated. In many parks 
the deer have also suffered. 
The general conditions which have induced and spread this 
serious visitation of liver-rot are generally recognised, and set 
forth in the preceding report. They consist in excessive un- 
seasonable floods, in tropical summer rain, the flooding of stream 
and river, the supersaturation of level flats inadequately drained, 
or from which the surplus water is only slowly removed. There 
is moreover good evidence that even on fairly drained meadows 
and clover leys, especially where the land is tenacious, the sur- 
face soil has been so run together by reiterated rain that water 
has stood in quantity, and for a period sufficient to provide 
fitting habitat for the hatching and subsequent development of 
the various forms of fluke-life, and for the favourable existence 
of the slugs which nourish and preserve the fluke throughout 
one important stage of its being. The few flukes found in 
sheep in wet situations, even during dry seasons, and which 
preserve the race, have thus had ample opportunity for multipli- 
cation and dispersion. On the drier uplands, hitherto perfectly 
free from liver-rot, fluke ova and more advanced forms have been 
carried by the droppings of infected sheep, of hares and rabbits, 
and probably also by the feet of dogs, men, and other animals. 
The inception of the parasite is usually unsuspected. For 
weeks or even months the presence of the mischievous intruder 
is not recognised. Unfortunately no symptoms, no altered 
pulse or temperature, no abdominal pains, no examination of 
the discharges, or other physical signs, indicate their existence 
or their doings. It is only when the parasites, reaching full 
maturity, produce irritation, inflammation, and solidification of 
the liver, and thus impair its important blood-purifying functions, 
that the so-called symptoms of rot are apparent. The caruncle 
of the eye then becomes pale and watery ; the muscular tissues 
soft and shrunken ; the wool, like other textures, imperfectly 
nourished, is dry and broken ; from the impoverished blood the 
fluid parts percolate through the thin pallid vessels, giving rise 
to oedematous swellings under the jaw, and in other dependent 
parts. But before these mortal symptoms show themselves it is 
very important that the flock-master should know whether his 
sheep have flukes. The only certain mode of discovery is to 
kill a sheep and carefully note the condition of the liver. On 
suspicious farms and in wet seasons it is desirable from time to 
time to adopt this rude test. The presence of flukes will at 
once suggest that the whole of the sheep which have been in 
similar circumstances should be liberally fed and early transferred 
