385 
FOOT AND MOUTH DISEASE. 
Our information from tlie Continent shows that the mouth 
and foot disease has only slightly decreased in Lombardy, 
although it has disappeared from many other countries of 
Europe. In Great Britain the malady still continues to show 
itself in fresh localities, arising chiefly from the local autho- 
rity not preventing the movement, to fairs and markets, of 
cattle which have only recently been affected, and whose 
systems cannot be said to be yet free of the morbific matter. 
Fifty-five counties are still suffering more or less, while the 
total number of centres of the affection amounts to 863. The 
number of farms returned for the first time up to the second 
week in April was 223. 
RICKETS IN LAMBS. 
In our last number we inserted an extract from the 
British Medical Journal on rickets in the lower animals, 
and took occasion to remark that we should make some ob- 
servations on the disease commonly known as rickets in 
lambs. The affection thus designated was, upwards of 
twenty-five years since, so far investigated as to prove to our 
satisfaction that its pathology was in no way allied to that 
diseased condition of the osseous tissue which constitutes the 
rickets of man. The bones of rickety lambs differ in no 
respect as to the relative amount of animal and earthy matter 
from those of the most healthy animals. The affection is in 
reality congenital defect of the soft tissues, involving espe- 
cially the lig amentum teres , which is elongated, even at the 
time of birth in some instances, to allow of partial luxa- 
tion of the hip-joint. As the young animal advances in life, 
however, this elongation increases, so that almost exclusively 
by the power of the muscles surrounding the joint, the head 
of the femur is kept in the acetabulum. Hence lambs are 
said to become rickety when a few weeks old. It is diffi- 
cult to account for this pathological condition of the hip- 
joint being so frequent in lambs, and especially so when it is 
borne in mind that on many sheep farms the cases are pe- 
riodic in their occurrence. Under ordinary circumstances, 
in a flock of 300 or 400 ewes, a lamb or two may be affected, 
for a few years in succession, when a time arrives at which 
the cases w r ill number even as many as 30 to 35 per cent. 
Heath-land farmers suffer most, and especially those on whose 
farms “ black sand” abounds. It is believed in Norfolk that 
if marl be spread on the surface of a black-sandy soil to 
improve its agricultural value, and the “ in-lamb ewes” be 
fed on the turnips which are sown in the ordinary course of 
