98 ON THE PROPAGATION OF ROT IN SHEEP. 
cum of excrement, whether it be humbly or quitlory , that can 
be taken up on the point of a knife, and spread upon the object 
glass of a microscope, will afford several sound eggs, we shall 
then become aware how abundantly they must be scattered over 
the surface of all sheep pastures grazed by an unsound flock. 
We must cease to wonder that so many sheep die of the rot; the 
miracle is, that every sheep does not die of it. We may rest 
assured that Nature or Providence has contrived some whole- 
sale mode of destruction of these eggs : without such contri- 
vance (which we must discover and imitate), not a head of grass- 
fed sheep would be found in Britain this day two years. 
Thirdly. — If we find flukes’ eggs disengaged from the excre- 
ments of unsound sheep by every dash of hasty rain ; if we find 
them in the puddles of water in which such excrement has dis- 
solved ; if we find them floating with hasty currents down 
furrows, ditches, and brooks ; if we find them spread over 
meadows upon which such foul waters ebb; if we find them 
adherent to herbage in all situations where such waters have 
rested or formed little eddies; we shall at once see how exten- 
sively diffused must be these eggs over those localities called 
“ rotting lands.” 
Fourthly. — If we shall discover these eggs hatching and 
hatched in the stomach and duodenum of sheep previously 
sound, but intentionally taken from sound to unsound pasture 
prior to slaughter, and if we shall discover the same in previ- 
ously sound sheep, fed still upon sound food, with which plenty 
of healthy flukes’ eggs have been intentionally commingled, and 
find the fluke making its way up the gall vessels of such pre- 
viously sound sheep, and in every stage of its progress to matu- 
rity, we shall be satisfied as to the modus propaganda of this 
disease : we shall perceive how variously this apparently insi- 
dious disease may be caught; and cease to wonder at the thou- 
sand and one miraculous tales told by herdsmen of ‘‘hair-breadth 
’scapes” of their flocks on one occasion ; and of their being on some 
other occasions affected by eating slugs, snails, dew of grass, &c. 
Fifthly. — If we shall discover that flukes’ eggs, when given 
intentionally with the food of sound sheep, on some occasions 
all perish in the stomach of the sheep from some accidental ad- 
mixture of medicinal herbs with its food, or from some skilful 
combination of salt, ammonia, soda, muriatic acid, or other me- 
dicaments with its food ; and if, on the other hand, we discover 
that in sound sheep similarly treated, but without the addition, 
by accident or design, of the preservative medicaments, the bulk 
of the flukes’ eggs vivify when [once arrived in their nidus, we 
shall derive valuable data upon which to argue and act, to 
prevent if not to cure the rot. 
