154

ON THE LIVE-STOCK

marks on their Anatomical Structure.” Several of the countyreports also, contain much information on this interestingsubject. It is chiefly from these publications, that the fol-lowing remarks have been collected, and it will therefore beunnecessary to quote them separately, unless when there is adifference of opinion among the authors, who seem, all ofthem, to have studied the subject with attention.

I. There are a few diseases peculiar to lambs, which maybe mentioned in the first place. When the ewes are in highcondition, and vegetation backward, the milk is strong andthick, the lambs are often seized with looseness, and the ex-crement, being of a gluey nature, fastens down the tail to theanus, and all passage from the bowels becomes intercepted.When shepherds observe this, they commonly seize thelamb, and, having washed and disengaged the tail, rubthe parts with dry earth, which prevents the tail from againadhering to the hips. Hogs-lard or sweet oil would cer-tainly answer better. This disease, or rather accident, iscalled finding or pinning, and may be prevented in a great,measure, by docking the lambs early. Some of the maleswill likewise fall, during the first ten days of their life, froman inflammation of the bladder; but this never happens but incold barren weather, when they lie too long in one place.During the month of June, a few lambs are sometimes af-fected with a stiffness of the joints, occasioned by the lowstate of the dam at the time. A straggling lamb will some-times die about this time of a kind of sickness, occasioned bymixing some kinds of grass too freely with the milk; this iscalled the grass-ill. Another cause of the death of lambs iscastration. To prevent this, care should be taken that it beperformed at a time when the air is free from electrical fire.Heating of them, -too, is very often fatal; and the operatormust, by all means, have recently abstained from spirituousliquors. The usual method of performing the operation, hasbeen already described ; the tail is then pulled two or three