162 
The Cure of Sheep Scab. 
was completely exterminated in New South Wa*es, Victoria, South 
Australia, Tasmania, and New Zealand without the slaughter of a 
single sheep. 
It is true that an Act was passed in New South Wales about 
1851 compelling the slaughter of scabbed sheep, and a few remaining 
straggling flocks were destroyed under that Act ; but on the re- 
appearance of scab in that Colony in 1863, by infection from 
Victoria, the Act was repealed, and the whole of the scabbed sheep, 
about 400,000, were completely cured by means of tobacco and 
sulphur, under the direction of Mr. Alexander Bruce, the present 
Chief Inspector of Stock for that Colony, and with whom I was then 
associated in the work. The whole number were cured in the space 
of eighteen months, and the cure would have been completed in less 
than a third of that time but for the failure of several individual 
owners, who used other medicaments besides tobacco and sulphur, 
but who were ultimately compelled to resort to the latter. 
Up to 1856 various applications were in use in Australia, the 
principal being corrosive sublimate, arsenic, tobacco, and many 
patent specifics ; but although these, as well as others, might and 
did kill the Acarus, neither of them were preventive of further 
attack. It was found that the Scab Acarus attached itself to trees, 
fences, <tc., and from these the sheep were again infected. Mr. 
John Rutherford of Victoria, whose name is revered by sheep owners 
throughout the whole of Australasia, conceived the idea that, if the 
skin and fleece could be thoroughly saturated with sulphur at the 
time of dipping, this material would adhere to the wool for a period 
longer than that during which the Acai-us could live on fences, trees, 
and other objects with which the sheep had been in contact, and 
would thus prove a complete preventive. I need not say how 
thoroughly his idea has stood the ordeal of practical test. The 
t obacco and sulphur treatment thus became recognised by the various 
Governments as the only known effective cure, and by its means 
scab was speedily eradicated from South Australia and New South 
Wales. Queensland had previously been rendered free from scab, 
and by the same means. 
Some years later the late Dr. Rowe, of Mount Battery Station, 
Victoria, an extensive sheep owner, introduced the use of lime and 
sulphur (apportioned as stated in the accompanying memoranda — 
page 165 — of instructions issued by me), and it was found to be 
a thoroughly effectual cure and preventive. It is the cheapest of 
all specifics, and can be prepared by any labourer of ordinary intel- 
ligence, or, as is frequently done, by a boy. With this specific, gcab 
was effectually banished from Tasmania and Victoria, and, as pre- 
viously stated, without the death of a single sheep. 
In 1885 a few rams arrived in Sydney from America, and as a 
precautionary measure were dressed three times in quarantine, at 
inter\’als, with Little’s Sheep Dip. Scab had been lying latent in 
these sheep, and some time after their release from quarantine the 
disease broke out among them, and they were destroyed (and paid for) 
as the speediest means of stamping it out, but principally in defer- 
