468 
SMALL-POX IN SHEEP. 
miscarriages happening to ewes in lamb, the inevitable transmis- 
sion of the disease to the lambs just dropped, and which generally 
die in great numbers, the stinted growth it produces and the im- 
pediments it throws in the way of fattening; lastly, the length- 
ened sequestration it requires in the sheep-fold during winter, 
and the cantonment assigned the sheep by the authorities in the 
summer time, make, altogether, so many circumstances occasioning 
loss both of money and time, as well as necessarily incurring 
greater or less expenditure. 
The selection of proper virus, inoculation properly conducted, 
followed by well-ordered and punctually executed management, 
will, in an immense majority of cases, not to say in every case, 
prevent the alarming inconveniences attendant on natural pox. 
18. Viewed as a measure of sanitary police, inoculation pre- 
sents results of no less importance. 
Put into practice on one or several isolated flocks in which the 
pox has already declared itself, and whose duration cannot be ac- 
counted shorter than from one to three months, inoculation cuts 
this short to one month, besides mitigating to a considerable de- 
gree the severity and amount of the morbid matters transmitted 
by the benignity with which it invests them. 
Now all these important advantages are set forth in a much 
more striking manner when the sheep-pox happens to be enzootic 
or epizootic among the' flocks of the canton, district, or depart- 
ment. In such a case as this, it sets limits to the duration of the 
epizootic, considerably lessens the chances of propagation, and, 
what is well worth noting, prevents those frightful mortalities 
which too often are occasioned by epizootic poxes assuming the 
malignant form. 
Lastly, introduced into flocks in health, but threatened with 
contagion, in a manner unavoidable, inoculation limits to one month 
the duration of the pox, and thus prevents the access of a disease 
which, on its first attack, might destroy a large number, besides 
increasing the propagating elements of contagion. 
Independently of all these incontestable advantages, inoculation, 
by transmitting the pox to the whole of the flocks of the same 
parish or locality, will render useless any measures of sanitary 
police, such as visiting, telling off, marking, separating, cantoning; 
— measures which I have represented as inconvenient, often in- 
sufficient to arrest contagion, and whose administration will now 
prove unnecessary, since in the same canton or valley all the 
sheep will have had the disease. And now the flocks may be 
driven into any pasturages, wherever they may be situate, how 
distant soever from the farm ; following the roads they are in the 
habit of taking, avoiding only such high roads or public thorough- 
