ON THE FOOl-ROT IN SHEEP. 39 
other times both fore feet; now and then all four; sometimes only 
a single claw on one foot; and both on another. 
Such are the symptoms which I have been accustomed to observe 
during fifteen years’ practice among these useful animals, and which 
deserve our most serious attention. I shall now make a few remarks 
on the question of its contagiousness. I have never been able to make 
up my mind decidedly on this point, although the strong leaning of 
my opinion is against its contagiousness. For the last three or four 
years I have made every inquiry of men accustomed to sheep. 
Some say, on my asking their opinion, that it is as infectious as the 
plague, for, if they put a lot of sound ones with some that were 
lame, they all became so. But I have then said, “ Perhaps the 
sheep with whom yours were put were in a soil favourable to the 
production of the foot-rot, and yours were taken from a healthy 
soil.” Such was generally the case, and such is the proof which 
farmers and others pretend to give us of its infectious nature. Little 
do they imagine what is the operating cause on a soil disposed to 
it. That which gives it to one will give it to a hundred, if there is 
a predisposition to take it on. 
Again, we hear of farmers that never had it on their estates, their 
farms being on healthy sites; but happening to take for a season, or 
buy at an auction, a ram that had the disease, and put him with 
the ewes, in from four to six weeks nearly the whole flock had been 
lamed. Scores of histories of this kind have been told me by dif¬ 
ferent people; but, from what I could gather, were solitary cases, 
and confined to the experience of the individual narrator. It might 
have been a wet season, for, during a wet or rainy summer (which 
has this year been the case), many farms that were free from, and 
others that rarely have it, have this season been pestered with it. 
Such a season might have occurred when conclusions were made to 
establish its contagiousness. 
My opinion is, that you may put lame sheep with sound ones on 
a healthy farm ; they will soon get well, and the others not become 
infected. As a proof of this, I will relate the experience of a near 
relative of mine that has a very healthy sheep estate; but who, 
also, rents an extraordinary rich flat piece of meadow land, watered 
by the town sewers. His sheep are put there occasionally, but, 
before a fortnight has expired, they are nearly all lame. He drives 
them home again, and, in a very short time, they are all sound, and 
not one of the others infected; but, if the lame sheep had been 
driven back to a farm disposed to the foot-rot (although none lame 
thereon at the time), it would have been ascribed to infection, had 
they also become lame after some lapse of time, instead of the soil, 
which is the grand operating cause in conjunction with moisture. 
If this disease is infectious, how is it induced? Many expori- 
