ON HYDATIDS IN TI1K SHEEP. 
529 
suit to be expected from them ? nearly or quite so : but then the 
farmer may do something, he may do much more than he 
imagines, in the icay of prevention. He should take much better 
care of his lambs in the winter. I have known a few cold nights 
have an effect in the flock that could not be completely got rid 
of for many weeks. Rheumatism, and coryza, and scouring, 
and ultimately the hydatid, severely and justly punish the farmer 
for his neglect and cruelty to his young charge in the winter. 
I am no advocate for that system of nursing which would render 
the flock unable to endure the sudden changes of our variable 
climate ; but there is a recklessness about our farmers with regard 
to their ewes and lambs at yeaning-time which cannot be too 
sternly reprobated, and for which they justly suffer. The winter 
and early months of spring being passed, the disease almost dis¬ 
appears. 
M. Giron de Buzaseinques, in a paper on this disease, read 
before the Royal and Central Societies of Agriculture in 1824, 
thus expresses himself:—“ I have put into practice my mode of 
prevention : I have fed my flock better and given them more 
exercise. I have driven them on the mountains of Aveyron, 
where the salubrity of the air and the diversity of the herbage in¬ 
cite them to stray about to cull the sweetest food. I have spread 
salt about, and by such regimen I have strengthened my sheep, 
and the consequence has been, that I have had less staggers 
among them; the malady is on its gradual decline, and I reckon 
by perseverance to get completely rid of it.” 
Supposed Prevention. —Some proprietors of sheep have en¬ 
deavoured to protect the cranial cavity from the debilitating in¬ 
fluence of cold and wet, by leaving the head covered with the 
wool until the lambs were eighteen months old, but the hydatid 
was as mischievous among the flock as before. A decoction of 
madder root has been given to whole flocks without beneficial 
result. Some persons have bled every sheep in the flock when the 
sturdy began to appear, but its ravages were not staid. Others 
severely blistered the whole of the roof of the skull, and with the 
same want of success. A German writer believed that the un¬ 
known parent of the hydatid pierced the skull on some part of 
the forehead and deposited its eggs, and therefore he covered the 
whole of the skull with a glutinous impervious substance, com¬ 
posed principally of the white of eggs : not a sheep the less was 
attacked, although the seat of the disease was protected by this 
impenetrable covering. 
Nairac’s Preventive Treatment. —The most recent preventive 
and curative, was that promulgated by Nairac, and of which Hur- 
trel D’Arbovul gives a long account in his Valuable essay on Le 
