80 
symptoms are a dulness, a languor, and a partial 
loss of appetite which are common to other dis- 
eases, and might readily be mistaken for indica- 
tions of light fever. A fattishness attends these 
which does not perceptibly differ from goodness 
of condition for the shambles, and which induced 
the celebrated Bakewell actually to subject his 
sheep for a few weeks to rotting influences as a 
preparation for the market, and which has been 
astutely seized by many a farmer as a crisis for 
profitably disposing of his sheep, when only a 
few days’ delay might allow them to be prostrated 
and rendered unmarketable and brought into 
peril by the rot. The first distinctive symptoms 
are paleness of the membranes, pale yellowish- 
ness of the skin, a slight tinging of the mouth 
and lips, and a yellowness of the caruncle at the 
corner of the eye. A few weeks after, the sheep 
begin to shrink, and become flaccid about the 
loins, and acquire a paleness of countenance ; 
and, at this stage, the skin has a pale red colour, 
the wool readily separates from the pelt, and, 
when the hips are pressed, they emit a percepti- 
ble crackling sound. At later periods, the skin 
becomes dappled with yellow and black, the mu- 
cous membranes become more pale, the eyelids 
become almost white and afterwards yellow, the 
dullness and the loss ef condition increase, the 
yellowness of the eyelids extends to other parts 
of the body, the wool separates still more readily 
from the pelt, the skin becomes loose and flabby, 
a dropsical secretion forms under the skin and 
extends over the body, and sometimes a large 
swelling, popularly called the watery poke, forms 
under the jaw, and then the sheep is said to be 
‘chockered.’ Hogg, when recording the results 
of his very extensive observation of the precur- 
sors and symptoms of rot, says that, when a sheep 
is becoming predisposed to it, from the effects 
of bad pasturage and perverted appetite, “the 
stomach and bowels increase to an extraordinary 
bulk, become an unmanageable weight, too 
weighty for the constituent parts to carry about 
with ease, or with that facility necessary to its 
thriving, and by degrees the animal assumes a 
bad shape, that is, the belly and hind quarters be- 
come heavy and lumpish, the fore quarters low, 
narrow, and contracted.” And headds, “The seeds 
of the disease may have struggled with the consti- 
tution for some seasons ; but when the following 
external symptoms are exhibited, it is a plain 
declaration that all the ingredients necessary to 
constitute the rot are condensed and formed into 
disease, and that death will immediately ensue. 
I shall mention them in the order in which they 
generally appear. About the latter end of Feb- 
ruary or beginning of March, the wool loses its 
healthy brown colour, becomes bleached and 
dead-like ; then follows considerable prostration 
of strength ; late in leaving the tathy spots, and 
early on them next morning,—probably would 
not leave at all if not urged away by the shep- 
herd ; fall always back in the ranks when the 
IGUANA NDE NI 1 A a EA ANN TSE eR A EE CNY TERY Sa Ue 
ROT, 
shepherd moves them forward ; a sullen, lustre- 
less eye, looking steadily at the shepherd ; an 
oedematous swelling under the chin,—this last is 
a late symptom.” 
The causes of rot assigned by veterinarians 
and experienced shepherds are numerous; and 
though some of them are fanciful, and others 
subordinate, most are worthy of consideration, 
and serve to indicate, if not the agencies, at least 
the circumstances and conditions, in which the 
disease originates—One assigned cause is the 
extrusion of the ovules of flukes by rotted sheep, 
and the swallowing of these ovules by sound 
sheep; and though this erroneously regards 
flukes as preceding and exciting the disease, 
rather than as following and aggravating it, yet 
it instructively paints out the fact of the coex- 
istence of flukes and rot upon a farm, and sug- 
gests the imminent danger to which a whole 
flock are exposed whenever any flukes can be de- 
tected in any single sheep’s carcase.—Another 
assigned cause is miasma, proceeding from :the 
soil and entering the lungs; and though this is 
proved to be fanciful by the total absence in rot 
of the symptoms of intermittent fever, or low 
fever, or inflammatory action which accompany 
all truly miasmatic disorders, yet it usefully di- 
rects attention to marshy grounds, or grounds of 
a similar kind to marshy ones, as the sites of the 
true causes of the disease. —A third assigned 
cause is a certain noxious production of a par- 
ticular kind of bog lands. 
says Mr. EK. May of Berkshire, “ that sheep be- 
come rotted from every kind of wet land, whether 
drained or not, but from a particular character 
of the soil and subsoil, such as is inclined to bog 
or quagmire, although it may not have that ap-. 
pearance on the surface of the land, but may lie 
8 or 12 feet deep. Between this subterraneous 
bog and the surface there is generally a hard stra- 
tum of blue clay or sand, tainted with the bog- 
water lying underneath at that depth ; and this 
infectious water is brought up from the bog to 
the surface of the earth by means of small pipes, 
which are always found to form the communica- 
tion between them, and called by experienced 
land-drainers bog-pipes. In consequence of this 
infectious water thus arising to the surface, a 
plant is produced, not of the grass-tribe, but 
called by some old experienced shepherds ‘the 
sheep-rot weed ;’ and if sheep are allowed to 
feed on this land, particularly if in a hungry 
state, although the weed does not grow more 
than an inch or two above the surface, and is of 
a nauseous taste, they will in this state of hunger 
indiscriminately eat it up along with the grass, 
and it will, I believe, more or Jess infect them 
with rot.” This, however, as well as a number 
of similar alleged causes, is contradicted by the 
existence and ravages of rot in situations where 
no such alleged rot-exciting vegetation exists ; 
yet it significantly points to deep, wet, boggy 
subsoils as a retreat of the true cause or causes 
“T do not think,” ~ 
Tay 
