CONSULTATIONS. 
539 
Reply. 
My dear Sir, — I was from home the greater part of yesterday, 
or I would have immediately replied to your letter. I much fear 
that this dreadful disease is assuming an epidemic character in your 
flock, and will pursue its course in despite of all that you can do. 
How is it with your neighbours] Has your flock been at former 
times subject to this dreadful malady] 
I scarcely know what measures to advise you to pursue. You 
must have recourse to antiphlogistic and decisive treatment : but 
there is often great difficulty in apportioning this to the state of the 
sheep. In diseases that imperiously demand it, you scarcely know 
what to do; for, with their lymphatic temperament, the very 
slightest excess in depletion will be as destructive as inflammation 
left to pursue its usual, and, too often, fatal course. 
The grand thing is to get them and to keep them in good health 
when the time of lambing approaches. I do not mean that they 
should be in high condition, but as healthy as they can be with a 
moderate quantity of fat about them. Perhaps a little portion of 
dry meat should be allowed. Health, without any unnatural irri- 
tability, would be the grand object sought after. How many 
things, with regard to shelter and to food, would this include ] 
After parturition, however, should inflammation of the womb 
threaten, I would not neglect either to bleed or to purge; but in 
both I should be cautious. 
W. Y. 
No. IX. 
Monkeys — Dilatation of the Heart. 
Sir, — As the season has proved very fatal to the animals at our 
Zoological Gardens, more particularly to the monkey tribe, of 
which we have recently lost between twenty and thirty, by an 
epidemic attacking the lungs, chest, and spleen, and which is very 
rapid in its termination, we are very anxious to hear from you 
whether you have been lately, or at any period, subject to similar 
visitations; and what has been your plan of treatment both as to 
diet and medicine, and whether you think the effluvia of the car- 
nivora likely to produce such an effect. 
We had hitherto, during the three seasons that we have been 
established, lost a very small number of animals, and much below 
the usual average; but we have now the mortality of several sea- 
sons in one, and our beast-house is almost depopulated. 
