Abstract Report on the Rot in Sheep. 
12!) 
which can be daily cut into chaff, with a proportion of hay, lor 
mixing with the other food. Judicious management will sur- 
mount many a little difficulty, and the result will be an ample 
reward for the care and attention which had been bestowed on 
the animals. If the system be properly carried out, little fear of 
the occurrence of rot, even in the most unpropitious seasons or 
on land proverbially bad for sheep, need be entertained. 
It will be seen that the quantity of salt and sulphate of iron 
which I have named is much below that which is ordinarily used. 
No doubt a larger amount may be safely employed, but it is 
to be remembered that the preventive power of the compound 
depends more on its long-continued use than on the largeness 
of its quantity for a time. A change of weather may call for 
its complete withdrawal, but, on the contrary, it may have to 
be continued throughout the entire summer and even long into 
autumn. The fondness of animals for salt will lead them to 
partake readily of an amount which may, under certain circum- 
stances, be productive of considerable mischief. Agriculturists 
need therefore to be put on their guard respecting an abuse of 
this valuable agent. 
Little more need be said respecting the employment of salt 
in the prevention of rot, except to take objection to the sug- 
gestions which have been made to sow it on the land, with a 
view of destroying the fluke-embryos. If two or three appli- 
cations of it in a year would do this, even should the herbage 
suffer for a time, I, perhaps, should not be found to dissent 
from the practice. But when it is remembered that the natural 
history of the liver-fluke establishes the fact that brood after 
brood of embryos are being produced from ova, cast daily out 
of the bodies of rotten sheep, and that the hatching process 
therefore goes regularly on day by day, and week by week, for 
several consecutive months, the necessity for frequent repetitions 
of salt in the same year becomes apparent, and these could not 
fail to be highly injurious to the pasturage, more especially on 
the retentive clays, where rot prevails. Repeated small dressings 
of lime I can conceive to be nearly as efficacious as those of 
salt in destroying the fluke-embryos, and these would stimulate 
the growth of better grasses, besides proving of permanent 
benefit to the soil ; nevertheless, neither salt nor lime-dressing 
of land must be depended upon as a preventive of rot. 
VOL. XVI. — S. S. 
