No. 175. j 
805 
to the ends of the wool, many dropping themselves to the ground, and 
others exposing themselves so that they are readily brushed from the 
fleece. 
162. Foot-rot.—How introduced into this district .—The foot-rot is 
altogether the most severe and the most dreaded of any disease preva¬ 
lent among the flocks of this district. Though it is now so common 
and wide-spread, it was unknown upon this continent, until it was in¬ 
troduced by the Saxon sheep. All the many cases of it that now exist 
in this section of the country, are believed to have been derived from a 
single diseased sheep, the history of which is therefore too important to 
be here omitted. 
In the Autumn of 1827, Judge Campbell obtained a buck from the 
newly-arrived flock of Mr. Grove. It was a fine animal, and cost the 
purchaser a hundred dollars. A slight lameness was observed in one 
of its feet at the time of its purchase. This, Mr. Grove assured Esq, 
Campbell, was caused by a sliver or stub which had got into the foot. 
That Mr. Grove supposed the anipial was wholly free from the foot-rot, 
no one who knew him, will doubt; and yet, it is difficult to conceive 
how a person so experienced in this disease, as Mr. Grove had been, 
came to be mistaken upon a point susceptible of being ascertained with 
such readiness and certainty. 
The buck was turned with Esq. Campbell’s flock, and ere long other 
sheep began to show the same lameness, and on the coming on of 
warm weather, the following spring, it fully developed its character, 
and raged with a virulence similar to the plague or yellow-fever when 
introduced into a populous city. Profoundly ignorant as our communi¬ 
ty was of the disease, and its mode of treatment, it advanced, uncheck¬ 
ed, until it had pervaded the whole flock, and destroyed a number of 
its members. A youth living with Esq. Campbell at this time, going 
bare-footed into the field got some of the virus into a slight scratch that 
was upon his foot. It produced a most painful and malignant ulcera¬ 
tion in the wound, and was at length cured by a resort to the same 
caustic application that was used upon the sheep. 
Other flocks in the neighborhood, from being drove to the same pen 
' to be washed, where Esq. Campbell’s flock had been, and in other anal¬ 
ogous ways, received the disease, and for a time it excited such con¬ 
sternation in Quassacoolc, and its vicinity, that the proprietors of sound 
flocks, scarcely dared to venture on to the public highway with their 
sheep, lest they should acquire the contagion. None of the other 
sheep obtained from Mr. Grove, communicated the disease to the flockB 
into which they were taken. Though it was known to be among his 
flock at the same time, he was careful to dispose of none but sound in. 
