Abstract Report on Rot in Shcr^i. 
121 
Although coal has not been discovered in Sussex, some re- 
mains of ancient foundries exist. I have recently drained a 
quagmire, a clearing road for woods, and made a firm road by 
a thick layer of cinders laid on wood fagots. The bed of 
cinders on which I draw is 20 feet deep and several yards wide, 
in a wood of Major Hollist's, known as Furnace Coppice, close 
to Furnace Pond, parish of Lynchmere, where in former days 
ironfoundries existed. Good specimens of Sussex iron firebacks, 
bearing the Montague Arms, are preserved in the mansion at 
Cowdray Park. Other designs may be found in the open hearths 
of many farmhouses in the county. 
V. — Abstract Report on Rot in Sheep. By J. B. SiMONDS, 
Principal of the Royal Veterinary College, and Consulting 
Veterinary Surgeon to the Society. 
With reference to the existing disease among sheep, commonly 
known as Rot, it is important that agriculturists should under- 
stand that the malady is one exclusively depending on the 
existence of parasites in the liver, ordinarily called Flukes. 
The embryos of these creatures enter into the stomach of the 
sheep in a form so minute as to escape ordinary observation : 
they may indeed be described as infusoria, abounding in water, 
and in wet pasture-grounds. From the stomach the embryos 
pass into the intestine and thence onwards to the gall-ducts of 
the liver, where they quickly increase in size and become as 
flukes sexually mature. The ova — eggs of the fluke — are depo- 
sited in the gall-ducts in immense numbers, and, flowing out 
with the bile into the intestinal canal, they are freely distributed 
with the fa?culent evacuations of the sheep wherever the animal 
may roam. It has been calculated that a single fluke will mature 
40,000 ova. In due course the expelled ova give birth to the 
infusorial embryos, which in an advanced stage of development 
again enter the bodies of sheep and other animals. It is thus 
that rot persists from year to year, and especially on wet farms. 
A few flukes may not be attended with any serious ill-conse- 
quences ; but the existence of a large number in the liver early 
produces structural changes in the organ itself, which, with the 
consumption of the bile on which the parasites live, ultimately 
cause a dropsical condition of the entire body of the affected 
animal, and necessarily lead to its death. 
It is only in an advanced stage of the disease that rot can 
with certainty be recognised, and frequently too late for curative 
remedies to be of much avail. Thus, for instance, the present 
serious outbreak of the disease had its commencement during 
