The treatment of rot is seldom very satisfactory; and if the animals, when first affected, are in tolerable condition, no time should be lost in having them slaughtered. If remedial measures are attempted, the sheep should be removed to a dry and sound situation, and liberally supplied with dry nutritive food. During the summer allow corn • or cake with the grass; during the winter, when cases arc most frequent, supply clover hay, peas, or split beans, a little bruised linseed cake, and a few roots: pieces of rock-salt should also be laid about the ground for the patients to lick at. Medicines are seldom of much avail. Those most to be relied on are turpentine and powdered gentian in two dram doses, given daily, beat up with an egg and a little milk, or with some linseed gruel. The turpentine, besides acting beneficially as a stimulant, doubtless also exer cises a poisonous action on the flukes, whilst the gentian imparts tone to the irritable and relaxed bowels. The prevention of rot is usually effected by removing from the land all superfluous moisture by deep and thorough drainage. The improvement of unsound
herbage may subsequently be expedited by dressings of lime, salt, soil, or composts of • farm-yard manure and earth. On all suspicious grazings, beans and oats should for a tune be given in moderate quantity, and access allowed to rock-salt. The Arab and shepherds have for centuries recognized the importance of such measures, for when their flocks became rotten from depasturing on the rank herbage that shoots up after the rising of the Nile, they often prevent serious loss by promptly transferring them to the desert, where the dry forage-plants are very rich in saline matters. The Australian flock-master likewise checks the complaint by promptly removing his sheep which have become tainted from the deep alluvial soils to the poorer upland "salt-brash" countries. In like manner, the salt marshes of Cheshire, and the saltings left along our coasts by the tides, have long enjoyed a well-deserved celebrity in the prevention, and even in early cases in the cure, of sheep-rot.