780 
INOCULATING SHEEP FOR THE SMALLPOX. 
thousands have died from the neglect of this precaution, I 
never lost an adult animal from the ordinary smallpox. 
In order to show the impossibility of avoiding contagion, I 
may state that the only boundary mark between properties 
in the open steppe country is a deep furrow made with the 
plough, which is soon overgrown with grass. The shep¬ 
herds are accustomed to meet on the border to chat with 
their neighbours. However strict the orders were not to 
approach a neighbour’s frontier when his sheep were tainted 
by this disease, I have myself more than once caught the 
shepherds returning from, or close to the frontier, when 
such a flock was in sight. Detection is, however, very diffi¬ 
cult, as twenty thousand sheep would be spread over a space 
of some forty or fifty thousand acres, divided into many 
farmsteads. 
I have heard of sheep which had been inoculated having 
caught the infection, but have frequently traced the cause to 
imperfect inoculation, which was not unfrequent so long as 
the operator merely passed an impregnated thread through 
the ear of the animal; but, as soon as the plan of making 
the puncture under and on the fleshy part of the tail became 
general, such failures were less common. I was as par¬ 
ticular in insisting on the careful inoculation of our lambs as 
on the vaccination of the children of the peasants. Our 
losses of lambs from inoculation were so trifling that we 
never kept a separate account; they were merged in the 
general total of yearly losses. 
The only precaution considered to be necessary was not to 
inoculate during very hot or cold weather; the latter, in par¬ 
ticular, proved fatal by preventing the free formation of the 
pustules and driving the disease inwards. Those who have 
the general charge of large flocks in Russia are mostly 
Germans, who have some knowledge of the veterinary art, and 
I never yet met with one of them (I have had many under my 
orders) who doubted for one moment the efficacy of inocula¬ 
tion ; on the contrary, it is considered by them to be one of 
their most important duties to perform that operation with 
success. The German sheep-inspector, who is always well 
paid and is intelligent, would as soon think of being without 
his pipe as without his inoculating needle l 
I shall be most happy to give any further information on 
this head to any one requiring it; my address will be with 
the worthy secretary of the society.— Journal of the Royal 
Agricultural Society of England • 
