sheep diseases: causes, nature and prevention. 313 
be conveyed to hills in any form, seeing that there are no roads 
or streets over them and consequently no tires of wheels or horse¬ 
shoes to he worn away; neither is there any old iron lying about 
to rust. 
I do not wish it to be concluded from what I have just said 
that I am an advocate for heavy manuring—far from it. I could 
relate dozens of instances of the injurious effects of such a system, 
but will only quote one or two. I have already directed atten¬ 
tion to the effects of over-manuring swedes and turnips, and, as 
a striking illustration of my argument, I may point out that the 
application of large quantities of nitrate of soda to pasture land 
is a frequent cause of diabetes and weed in horses feeding on the 
grass or clover grown thereon, even when these are made into 
hay; and in my own practice I have frequently told my clients 
that their horses were fed on such grass or hay (though I knew 
nothing at the time of the district from which it had been 
brought) and subsequent inquiry has proved the correctness of 
my conclusions. 
Neither animals nor vegetables can be said to be in a really 
healthy state if they are over-forced. Wheat grown on a dung¬ 
hill frequently fails to attain maturity. Turnips grown with 
excess of stimulants, especially nitrates, decay or decompose early. 
Near Edinburgh lately,^turnips grown with manure were sold at 
£14, those with nitrates at £8 per acre, the dairymen averring 
that the latter do not keep. Mutton grown on ling and heather 
is sweeter and more satisfying than is the mutton of trough or 
manger-fed sheep. 
I am quite aware that I may be told—and I have been so told 
—that I am laboring under a mistake ; that plants will not take 
up excessive quantities of salts. If this were so, why do we see 
diabetes and weed when nitrate of soda is used in excess ? and 
how is it that when sheep and cattle are fed on turnips and grass 
grown with a liberal supply of superphosphates or even of lime, 
the quantity of lime salts passed off by the urine is so great that 
concretions are formed in the bladder of the sheep which block 
up the worm-like appendage at the end of the penis and, if not 
removed, cause death by retention of urine ? In bullocks, the lime 
