SMALLPOX AMONG SHEEP IN WILTSHIRE. 
743 
the affected animals, without having recourse to inoculation. 
It further appears that inoculated flocks, through carelessness 
or inadvertency of the shepherds, have communicated the 
disease to other flocks, and that from the crowded state of the 
Downs due isolation of an inoculated flock is very difficult, 
and in certain cases, perhaps, impossible. 
From these facts it would seem, then, that inspection and 
separation should he chiefly depended upon in the present 
outbreak, and inoculation only had recourse to as a final resort. 
It would also seem that if the outbreak should still extend, it 
would become a question for consideration wffiether or not 
inoculation should not be subjected to legislative interference 
—not for the purpose of prohibiting the measure, as some 
have advised, but of regulating its uses. For it would be 
requisite to forbid the performance of the operation by an 
unqualified person, and to compel, under heavy fines, the 
proprietors of inoculated flocks to entirely isolate their flocks. 
It is asserted that one or more flocks have been inoculated in 
the present outbreak in which no indications of smallpox 
have appeared. We shall be curious to learn what could have 
induced this course to have been taken. 
If there is no legal right of way for strange flocks and 
herds along the “ drifts” traversing the Downs, ought not 
the farmers to take some measures to prevent these by-paths 
being made use of by any but those w 7 ho have a right of 
passage ? Or, if a general right of way exists, should not steps 
be taken to prevent or diminish the probability of diseased 
sheep or cattle travelling along these roads, which are fully 
open to the grazing tracts ?—Medical Critic, Oct. 
[There is no ground whatever for the opinion that 
Mr. Parry^s flock took the disease from any animals passing 
along the so-called “drifts,” the fact being fully established 
that the sheep were on the most distant part of his farm, 
something like two miles, from these “ by-paths,” at the 
time they were first exposed to the infection, nor can it in any 
way be proved that “inoculated flocks, through carelessness 
or inadvertency of the shepherds, have communicated the 
disease to other flocks.”] 
