ON TIIE DRACONCULE OF LAMBS. 
525 
the same ; but as, up to the present time, no other remedy for this 
fatal malady seems to be known, I do not think I ought to con¬ 
ceal it; and I leave it to your determination to publish my ob¬ 
servations in your Annals, either entire, or to make extracts from 
them. Perhaps some of your readers may, unfortunately, be in a 
situation to require such a remedy, and it will give me great 
pleasure if it is as serviceable to them as it was to me. At any 
rate, a number of essays on one subj ect must lead to some good 
result. 
Segefield, near Spandau. 
The readers of these Annals, as well as the editors, are in¬ 
finitely obliged to M. le Baron de Reck for this valuable com¬ 
munication. 
1 never knew this disease in any degree so violent and mortal. 
Nevertheless, there is scarcely a year passes in which it does not 
make its appearance in some of my lambs, characterized by cough 
and looseness ; but it has always, until now, passed away without 
my suffering any loss. I think I may attribute this result to 
my always being in the habit of giving them clean and dry 
fodder in the fold, which they never refuse, though they are in 
the best pasture. This year it appeared about the middle of 
October, attended only by looseness; and the animals that had 
been lately driven some distance were those that were principally 
attacked. They were taken to the fold, and salt mixed with 
wormwood and tar given to them, after which they soon recovered, 
and not one died. I ascribe it to this disease, that, during the 
inoculation of my lambs with the matter of scab, which 1 per¬ 
form every year at this season, I lost two or three in a hundred, 
while, before this, the loss seldom exceeded one in a hundred : 
nevertheless, I do not directly accuse this disease, since, through 
fear of weakening them, I did not give the strong purgative, 
which I had always been accustomed to administer to them on 
the first day of the eruptive fever. I never saw the disease very 
fatal but in 1820, at Franckenfelde, where the lambs were very 
much weakened ; but only a small number of them died, because 
good food was given them in the fold. 
I perfectly agree with M. Einsender, that it is wrong to con¬ 
sider the eating of sand as the cause of this disease, or of many 
others. My sheep eat an astonishing quantity of sand and 
earth with the potatoes, because these have been cultivated in 
ground which has been strongly and freshly dunged, and yet 
they are perfectly well. Many persons have remarked, that the 
disease often makes its appearance in pastures where,, in the 
middle of summer, small sorrel grows in great quantities. It 
disappears immediately after the manure is laid on, and the sheep 
