SMALL-POX IN SHEEP. 
527 
likely to occasion such consequences, I will grant that they might 
happen ; at the same time I feel it my duty to remark, that they 
have no right to be seized upon for the purpose of casting disfavour 
upon inoculation. And, in point of fact, 1 have already shewn, in 
publishing the results of the . inoculation of flocks throughout 
France, that, out of 28,533 sheep of different breeds and ages, 
in lamb and suckling, fat and lean sheep, and coming, as I ought 
not to forget, from flocks already attacked with the disease, which 
have been inoculated, the losses have not exceeded 1 per cent. 
Results such as these appear to me like a triumphant reply to the 
question at issue. 
To resume : — if the inoculation of a malignant and fatal pox, made 
during hot weather, and by punctures through the skin, or under 
conditions unfavourable to the success of the operation, occasions 
no more than 13 or 14 per cent., while the natural pox would 
occasion a loss of 20 per cent, in the same flocks ; — 
If the inoculation, properly conducted, of 2544 head, consisting 
of very young lambs, sheep of different ages, ewes near lambing 
or giving suck, and old sheep, has not occasioned a loss greater 
than 3 or 4 per cent. ; — 
If, in the case of epizootic and fatal pox, the inoculation of 
28,533 sheep suspected to have already taken the natural pox 
has not caused the death of more than about 1 per cent. ; — 
I think I am warranted in coming to the conclusion, that, in 
making a computation at the present day of the various conditions 
objected to for the success of inoculation, it is not possible to raise 
the objection that this operation transmits a pox so intractable and 
fatal as the natural pox. 
Third Objection : Sheep-pox may be detrimental to the 
farmer's interests in so far as it operates on the breeding, rearing, 
fattening , feeding, sale of the animals, their shearing, and the 
price of their fleeces. — I admit that inoculation, notwithstanding the 
disease it transmits be a benignant one, may under particular cir- 
cumstances occasion serious inconveniences; I admit that its em- 
ployment may delay the tupping season, by which is regulated a 
favourable lambing-time, and so operate against the views and in- 
terests of the breeder ; it may provoke abortion ; I likewise admit 
that the temporary disturbance of the functions may operate in 
retarding the development of the foetus ; that during lactation it 
may influence the quantity and quality of the milk, and so retard 
the growth of the lambs, or occasion diarrhoea among them ; I 
admit that fresh-dropped lambs may contract the pox ; I admit 
that inoculation made at the time of the fairs at which sheep from 
eighteen months to two years old are sold, may postpone such 
