abstracts: ornithology 323. 



ervoirs and water works, boulevards, and roadsides. On the national 

 reservations much could be done to attract waterfowl by planting 

 suitable water plants which form a large part of the food of such birds, 

 and by furnishing for upland game birds coverts which would also 

 provide abundant food from their fruits. In public parks and 

 zoological gardens the bird population may be very much increased 

 by the proper installment of drinking places, bird boxes for breeding 

 places, and feeding stations during the winter; nor should the planting 

 of suitable trees and shrubs on parkways, boulevards, and along road- 

 sides be neglected. Without much doubt the use of bird-attraction 

 methods on such public and semipublic lands would benefit not only 

 these areas but, through the increased destruction of injurious insects^ 

 also all the adjoining lands and the country at large. 



Harry C. Oberholser. 



ORNITHOLOGY. — The duck sickness in Utah. Alexander Wet- 

 more. U. S. Dept. Agric. Bull. 672: 1-26, 191 8. 



The annual losses from disease among wild fowl in the Salt Lake 

 Valley, Utah, became so great that the Biological Survey began, in 

 1 9 13, an investigation of the causes. Although for many years the 

 ducks in the Bear River marshes, at the northern end of Great Salt 

 Lake, have been known to be affected by a peculiar sickness, this did 

 not become serious until 19 10; but in that year so many thousand 

 wild ducks died in this region that sportsmen and other persons interested 

 in wild fowl became much alarmed over the situation. The same con- 

 dition has been reported from other areas — Owens Lake, California, 

 Tulare Lake, California, Lake Malheur, Oregon, Lake Bowdoin, Mon- 

 tana, and the Cheyenne bottoms near Great Bend, Kansas. The 

 species affected in these various outbreaks comprise 36, and include 

 many species of ducks, gulls, terns, shore birds, and other water-fowL 

 together with a few land birds such as Pica pica hudsonia, Xanthocepha- 

 lus xanthocephalus, Anthus spinoletta rubescens, and even Petrochelidon 

 lunifrons lunifrons. 



The most conspicuous symptoms of this peculiar duck disease in- 

 dicate a paralysis of the nerve centers controlling the muscular system. 

 It is first noted in the inability of the bird to fly for any great distance, 

 and finally in the lack of power to fly at all. The paralysis extends 

 later to the legs and feet, then to the head and neck, so that the bird 

 ultimately becomes entirely helples?. 



