CONSULTATION RESPECTING SHEEP. 
2W 
Inflammation. “Pshaw!” I always interfere when I have any 
previous acquaintance with them, “ you murdered them, and I do 
not pity you a bit; you half deserve hanging yourselves.” — This 
is a bitter pill, and they do not like the doctor for administering it. 
“ No, no,” says your friend, “ I do not do this; Mr. Y. is quite 
mistaken ;” and “ so say all of them.” 
Then I will tell him what he does; he diligently cultivates a 
breed of sheep that has a faculty almost beyond conception of 
turning nutritious food into blood. Put a Leicester sheep on 
good or too good pasture, at least as compared with that from 
which he is taken, and I dare not say in what small a space of 
time, and before his appearance of condition is much altered, the 
quantity of blood which flowed through his veins is in a manner 
doubled. What is the natural, the frequent, the almost neces- 
sary consequence of this? He thinks that it is the fat sheep 
alone that can die plethoric ; but I will tell him that there is equal, 
perhaps greater, danger with regard to these fast blood-making 
sheep, if the pasture is incautiously and too rapidly changed, 
when they are in common store condition, than when they are 
somewhat oppressed with fatness. In the latter case, they die 
of apoplexy; in the former, of inflammation of every kind. 
Therefore, as to your friend, I have scarcely a word to say to him 
about medicines. If he has been in a little too great a hurry, 
the lancet and the Epsom salts are very good things, and I can 
add nothing; to them. Let him go back again to his half-breds ; 
let him go back again, if he pleases, to his pure Leicesters ; and 
if he, although perhaps an experienced breeder, will take the ad- 
vice of a poor veterinary surgeon who has hitherto been supposed 
to know nothing about the matter — (what do not our established 
veterinary instructors deserve when this is the case? and shame 
on the agricultural interest generally that suffers such a state of 
things to be) — I will promise him that his losses, if not quite ar- 
rested, shall be very much limited. 
Let him abate a little of his emulation on points of no practi- 
cal importance. Let him give greater scope to that which is con- 
nected with his own and with the national prosperity. Let him di- 
ligently cultivate that breed of sheep which on his land he can 
most quickly and most cheaply bring into marketable condition. 
When he changes his pasture from a tolerable to a forcing one, 
let him be more cautious than farmers generally are — let them first 
go on their cabbages or their turnips for not more than two 
or three hours a-day — let the time be very gradually extended : 
and, when the day is spent on them, let it be a short one — the 
opening of the fold a little later, and the return to it a little 
sooner than usual. 
