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Gontagious Foot-rot in Sheep. 
As it will be necessary to vary the leguminous crops if they 
are to be extensively grown for fodder, it is highly desirable to 
try as many as possible. Beans may be specially recommended, 
as they provide an immense amount of nutritious food if fed off 
in the green-pod stage by sheep, and probably they are equally 
valuable for cattle, although I have not seen the latter point 
tested. They also make valuable silage, I believe. Then, there 
are lucerne, trifolium, lathyrus, serradella, the kidney vetch (for 
light soils), and other crops which are of the nitrogen-accumu- 
lating order. 
Other experiments calculated to elucidate the Nitrogen 
Question might be suggested, such as the inoculation of soils 
with the special microbes required by the several leguminous 
crops, and with the two microbes which, as shown in Dr. Munro’s 
article, carry on the work of converting inert nitrogen into 
nitrates. But, for the present, enough experiments have been 
proposed for tbe co-operative trials which this article is written 
to advocate. 
William E. Bear. 
CONTAGIOUS FOOT-ROT IN SHEEP. 
In the history of sheep-husbandry foot-rot has always been 
referred to as a scourge of the race, causing serious losses 
wherever it appears, and in some parts of the world the malady 
assumes a degree of malignancy which entitles it to be classed 
among the most virulent of animal plagues. 
The different views which have been entertained as to the 
causes of the disease, its nature and contagious character, have 
apparently arisen out of a misconception of the fact that several 
diseases of the foot of the sheep have been described as foot-rot, 
most of them depending on primary injury to the hoof, leading 
to inflammation of the tissues within the horny covering. 
Contagious foot-rot, in the first instance, invariably exhibits 
itself in the skin between the claws, whence it extends to the 
interior of the foot, and causes the shedding of the hoof from the 
pressure of the fungoid growths from the secreting membrane 
of the internal foot. 
