468 PRESENT METHOD OF TURNIP CULTURE. 
affecting those chiefly on grass land, which is evidently 
the result of extreme cold alone, and is not inaptly termed 
“storm-struck.” Here abortion was not the leading feature, 
but a general and total paralysis seized all the voluntary 
muscles, the brain becoming affected, and the poor animals 
dying in from twelve to twenty-four hours, in a state of coma, 
or in the milder cases slowly recovering, emaciated in form, 
and perhaps ultimately aborting their young. This disease, 
how’ever, has not existed to any great extent. 
The highest altitudes of the Wold Hills have suffered most 
by the ewes aborting. They are more freely supplied by a 
manuriai seed-bed, the turnips are more generally unhealthy 
and rot early, and the sheep likewise suffer more from nearly 
all sorts of disease than in the lower-lying grounds. 
The turnips that were affected with the smother fly last 
summer, and stocked early in the autumn, produced a low 
gastro-enteric fever in the hoggets, which killed them by 
wholesale ; the deaths were, however, quickly stopped as soon 
as a change to more healthy food took place. Not only is decay¬ 
ing matter capable of transmitting its action to young growing- 
vegetables, but decaying vegetables will equally transmit that 
action to the blood of animals, and thus render it incapable 
of maintaining the wants of the system. There are other 
weakening influences in action. The indiscriminate applica¬ 
tion of mercurial ointment on sheep cannot be too strongly 
condemned. It is a delusion to think that it either adds to 
the weight of the wool or improves the condition of the 
animal, but, on the contrary, it diminishes the fleece, by weak¬ 
ening the constitution, and thus rendering the animal for 
some time more prone to take on disease from slight causes. 
It should never be used unless the sheep are really scabbed, 
the washes in general use being cheap, and far more effectual, 
when properly applied, in the destruction of filth. Neither 
should common salt be given ad libitum ; it causes the 
animals to take more fluid than is consistent with a due con¬ 
centration of the gastric fluid to properly digest the food, 
hence results emaciation and a decreased power of resisting the 
causes of disease. Rock salt may be allowed in the lump, 
but not in a state of powder. The present forcing system of 
bringing the animal in half the time to the stall of the butcher 
has its influence in weakening the constitution by loading 
the carcass with fat; but happily this system is not generally 
adopted in breeding animals, or its positive tendency would 
in the end be to annihilate the flock. To blindly look on, 
and, with the multitude, ascribe disease to causes over which 
we have no control, is at one fell swoop to paralyse effort. All 
