VETERINARY JURISPRUDENCE. 
661 
Cross-examined. —It was a very difficult question to answer—the 
length of the existence of flukes. He would not like to say those now 
exhibited to him had existed three months. Last season, however, was 
a very exceptional one, and the disease was developed in half the time 
of previous years. Still it would not be correct to say that the land 
which he had found incapable previously of producing it had been 
capable of producing the disease. It was probably a fact that farms 
which had been considered good previously last season baned sheep. 
His Lordship suggested, at this point, that further evidence of this 
character should not be called, and Mr. Collins acquiesced. 
James King , who had been a shepherd on Mr. Butler’s farm for 
upwards of forty years, deposed that he had never had a baned sheep 
on the farm. 
Mr. Charles Giddings, whose land adjoins the Bratton Drove, said he 
lost fifteen cows from fluke in the last season. The animals commenced 
dying in February, and were, when alive, constantly passing up and 
down the drove. 
Mr. Edward Carter , who is occupying the House Croft Farm, said 
Bratton Drove led through his farm. He had unfortunately lost a 
great number of sheep 4 from bane; and it was some of his sheep that Mr. 
Jones bought at the auction sale. It would be dangerous for sheep to 
stop in the Bratton Drove. He agreed with Mr. Barford’s description 
of it. 
Cross-examined. — He sold his thirty lambs in December. 
Alfred Rawlings , a butcher, who had bought several of the same flock 
from which Mr. Jones’s sheep were taken, was called, but did not 
respond. Mr. John Pound said he had personally that morning 
served him with a subpoena at Stockbridge Fair, but he told him that 
he should not attend. 
Defendant was recalled to prove that he had sold the remainder of his 
flock to Bawling at 30s. a head. 
Cross-examined. —Defendant swore that he considered 30s. a head a 
sound price, and that he did not consider that he sold the animals at 
an unusual season. 
This concluded the evidence. 
Mr. Collins then, in a long speech, addressed the jury for the defendant, 
and particularly called attention to the fact that the other animals of 
the flock from which Mr. Jones’s hundred were taken were perfectly 
free from the disease, with the exception of one animal. He suggested 
that if the animals did not contract the disease on Mr. Jones’s farm it 
must have been inoculated in Bratton Drove. 
Mr. Norris replied in an effective speech. He called attention to the 
state of the two fields on the defendant’s farm, which, from the fact of 
rushes growing there, must have been in a wet, marshy condition, and 
liable to originate the disease. Could not the germs of the disease 
have been caught there ? Or, perhaps, they might have been caught 
from the adjoining farms, upon which it certainly prevailed. As to 
the suggestion that the animals contracted the disease in the drove, he 
pointed out that the animals did not remain there but a few minutes, 
and he characterised as absurd the suggestion that the animals could 
all have contracted it by the slight “ nibbling” of the roadside. 
His Lordship , in summing up, said that the sheep were warranted there 
was no doubt, and accordingly what the jurj had to determine was 
whether at the time they were sold they had the germs of the disease, of 
which some of them ultimately died, or were killed because they were in 
such a state as to be no use keeping them any longer. The warranty 
lih. 45 
