586 
EDITORIAL OBSERVATIONS. 
vividly before our memories, and we fear lest they should 
be again repeated. Nor are these fears lessened when we 
compare the circumstances connected with the present and 
the past outbreak. The first occurrence of the malady 
was satisfactorily accounted for, while to the second no clue 
has as yet been obtained. 
Hitherto we have regarded the smallpox as spreading 
only by contagion; now we must ask whether it can have 
a spontaneous origin ? If the latter, no flock is safe, nor 
any part of the country secure. That which has occurred 
in Wiltshire may happen to-morrow in Sussex, and the 
next day in the midland counties. Having been consulted 
on the discovery of this disease by the owner of the 
animals, we have pretty well exhausted our stock of surmises 
for its introduction without making much progress towards 
a satisfactory explanation of the circumstance. The part of 
Wiltshire where the malady made its appearance is peculiar 
for its isolated position. No foreign sheep travel its roads, 
nor have any been known to be purchased by the butchers 
of the neighbourhood. The flock, consisting of 992 ewes, 
9 rams, and 710 lambs, in which the disease originally mani¬ 
fested itself, has had no fresh animals, male or female, in¬ 
troduced into it, nor has it been commingled in any way with 
other persons’ sheep. From the means which we promptly 
adopted it was hoped the disease would be confined to the 
one flock in question, but we regret to say that it has shown 
itself in another, which was located about a mile distant. 
The fatality has been most serious, and still continues, 
so that it is impossible at present to estimate the 'per¬ 
centage of deaths among the natural cases of the disease. 
Inoculation has been had recourse to, and with the most 
beneficial results, for by it probably the lives of from two 
to three hundred sheep have been preserved, and an equal 
number of the lambs. At present the deaths from the 
inoculated disease have had to be reckoned by twos and 
threes only, while the ultimate ill consequences of the 
malady from ulceration and sloughing of different parts of 
the body, and the necessary emaciation of the patients, have 
been entirely prevented. 
