276 
ROT IN SHEEP. 
although agreeing in their latter stages with some of the symp¬ 
toms of rot, are essentially and totally different. The next 
remark that I would make with regard to this disease is that 
it is by no means new. It is not new to us; nor, in fact, can 
it be said to be so to earlv investigators. We find the earliest 
writers upon the diseases of cattle and sheep making mention of 
the destruction which arises from time to time from rot, and 
they speak of a variety of causes as being in operation to pro¬ 
duce this state of the animal organism. Not only is it not new 
to this country, but the same remark will apply to foreign 
countries, and I think it would not be going too far to say 
that there is no part of the globe where sheep have been 
domesticated, in which we do not find this disease more or 
less prevailing. It belongs to no clime or country. This is 
a matter of some importance, because, if the assertion be true, 
we shall see that all the local causes in this country to which 
the malady is by many persons attributed, cannot possibly 
have reference to other countries. For example, some persons 
speak of the deleterious effects of certain grasses, such as the 
carnation grass. Now, the carnation grass does not, so 
far as I know, belong to Egypt or to Australia, or to other 
parts of the world where this disease is met with ; and this 
shows us, were there no other proofs, that we are not right 
in looking for any one special cause of this affection, in regard, 
at any rate, to the kind of provender upon which the animals 
may be feeding. It will perhaps be unnecessary for me to 
allude to the great losses which all countries from time to time 
have* sustained from outbreaks of this affection. In Egypt 
the losses are very considerable, and they are always found to 
attend upon the too earlv passing of sheep upon those districts 
that had been overflowed by the Nile; hence some individuals 
have supposed that there sprang up upon soils of this kind, 
plants which are injurious to sheep, and produce the affection. 
But in this country also we have had serious outbreaks of the 
malady. Perhaps the greatest outbreak that ever occurred in 
England, or at any rate the one respecting which we have the 
most authentic information, is that which took place in 1830, 
in which it was supposed that we lost not fewer than two 
millions of sheep; and the result was that an inquiry then 
going on in the House of Commons, with regard to the 
depressing causes of agriculture, branched out into an in¬ 
vestigation of those losses. I believe the Government fully 
ascertained that in the following year the weekly supply of 
sheep to our metropolitan markets was diminished by 3,000 
—a circumstance that will help to show us to what an extent 
we have suffered in this country when these great outbreaks 
