It is well known that many diseases are propagated and aggravated through the sexual congress; and no matter how healthy the dam is, or how much vital resistance she possesses,--if the male be weak and diseased, the offspring will be more or less diseased at birth. (See article _Breeding_.) Dr. Whitlaw observes, "The Deity has given power to man to ameliorate his condition, as may be truly seen by strict attention to the laws of nature. An attentive observer may soon perceive, that milk, butter, and meat, of animals that feed on good herbage, in high and dry soils, are the best; and that strong nourishment is the produce of those animals that feed on bottom land; but those that feed on a marshy, wet soil produce more acrid food, even admitting that the herbage be of the bland and nutritious kind; but if it be composed in part of poisonous plants, the sheep become diseased and rotten, much more so than cattle, for they do not drink to the same degree, and therefore (particularly those that chew the cud) are not likely to throw off the poison. Horses would be more liable to disease than cattle were it not for their sagacity in selecting the wholesome from the poisonous herbage. "A great portion of the mutton slaughtered is unfit for food, from the fact that their lungs are often in a state of decomposition, their livers much injured by insects, and their intestines in a state of ulceration, from eating poisonous herbs." Linnæus says, "A dry place renders plants sapid; a succulent place, insipid; and a watery place, corrosive." One farmer, in the vicinity of Sherburne, (England,) had, during the space of a few weeks, lost nearly nine hundred sheep by the rot. The fear of purchasing diseased mutton is so prevalent in families, that the demand for mutton has become extremely limited.