5*24 
SMALL- POX IN SHEEP. 
it, invades whole counties and districts, and spreads over a large 
extent of country. In the case of epizootic pox, the difficulty of 
establishing feeding places sufficiently distant one from another to 
guard against infection being transmitted through the air ; to pre- 
serve them from all possibility of communication with the sheep- 
cote; to prevent watering at the same places with those in health; 
even to go along the same roads ; and, above all, to guard against 
the clandestine sale of sheep that have been exposed, inadvertently 
perhaps, to certain contagion ; and, besides, the difficulty, the great 
impossibility there is in withholding the hands of magistrates from 
the execution of the laws and regulations concerning the sale of such 
animals for slaughter, the burying their carcasses, and disinfection; 
the ignorance of many graziers of the importance of such measures, 
their carelessness, their indifference to the strict execution of such 
laws; all these are so many circumstances favouring the spread of 
the disease. If now I add, that, when the disease is left to itself, 
it will occupy three or four months with one flock, it will be easy 
to understand how it happens that contagion becomes, in general, 
inevitable whenever the pox prevails in an epizootic form over a 
large extent of country. 
Such plausible reasons lead to the objection urged against the 
inoculation of flocks in good health, that by so doing the fomes of 
contagion become augmented, and the media of transmission 
multiplied. To me this appears a fair objection. It is incontes- 
tible that, if in any one district four flocks are attacked with the 
natural pox, and four others continue in health but threatened with 
contagion, you have the disease conveyed wherever it does not 
exist ; it is equally certain, too, that you will have eight forms of 
contagion in place of four. But if we reflect for a moment, that by 
inoculating the animals remaining out of the four infected flocks, 
as well as those of the four flocks in health, we diminish the ma- 
lignity of the malady, as well as weaken its contagious influence, 
and limit its duration to thirty days at most ; if we consider that 
natural contagion, gaining fresh activity with every attack, may 
last for three or four months in each flock, and that under the sup- 
position that one or two out of the four healthy flocks catch the 
disease, the contagion may not pass away in the six or eight 
months, or even more, out of the infected district; and if we con- 
sider that the duration of the malady will be limited in the locality 
where it first broke out; and, moreover, if we consider all the 
advantages inoculation holds forth touching the conservation of 
flocks, their fleeces, &c. &c., we shall spurn the idea of multiply- 
ing fomes and media of transmission through inoculation. And, 
besides, facts speak louder than opinions. In every place where 
sheep-pox has prevailed as an epizootic, and inoculation has been 
