Advantage, of Inoculating Sheep for Small-Pox. 5Q9 
beans, and from about tbe middle of August, when they become 
fit for harvesting, mix some straw-chaff with them to prevent the 
bullocks getting " blown." 
J. Mechi. 
August, 1864. 
9. — On the Advantage of Inoculating Sheep for the Small-Pox. 
By Josiah Deacon. 
Only lately returned to England after very many years' residence 
in Russia, [ was both surprised and gratified on reading Pro- 
fessor Simond's able lecture on " Small-Pox in Sheep ;" surprised 
that the question had not been long since decided, gratified at 
his masterly and conclusive treatment of the subject. I venture 
now to add my humble testimony, derived from twenty-five 
years' experience in the steppe country of Mid and South Russia, 
where I have had landed estates under my administration with 
flocks of merino sheep varying from a few thousand head to 
upwards of twenty thousand. On these inoculation was systema- 
tically employed with unfailing success. Although the sheep 
under my charge were perpetually exposed to contagion, from the 
existence in our immediate neighbourhood of flocks in which 
thousands have died from the neglect of this precaution, / never 
lost an adult animal from the ordinary small-pox. 
In order to show the impossibility of avoiding contagion, I 
may state that the only boundary-mark between properties in the 
open steppe country is a deep furrow made with the plough, 
which is soon overgrown with grass. The shepherds are accus- 
tomed to meet on the border to chat with their neighbours. How- 
ever strict the orders were not to approach a neighbour's frontier 
when his sheep were tainted by this disease, I have myself 
more than once caught the. shepherds returning from, or close to 
the frontier when such a flock was in sight. Detection is, how- 
ever, very difficult, as twenty thousand sheep would be spread 
over a space .of some forty or fifty thousand acres, divided into 
many farmsteads. 
I have heard of sheep which had been inoculated having caught 
the infection, but have frequently traced the cause to imperfect 
inoculation, which was not unfrequent so long as the operator 
merely passed an impregnated thread through the ear of the 
animal ; but, as soon as the plan of making the puncture under 
and on .the fleshy part of the tail became general, such failures 
were Jess common. I was as particular in insisting on the 
careful inoculation of our lambs as on the vaccination of the 
children of the peasants. Our losses of lambs from inoculation 
VOL. XXV. 2 N 
