310 Seventeenth Annual Report of the 



wagons, etc., used must be similarly treated with antiseptics. The 

 same precautions must be employed on the animals after having 

 been engaged in plowing' under the manure. Horses with long, 

 thick coats should be clipped. 



Dogs, cats and poultry of all kinds, including pigeons, must be 

 shut ii|). All tend to bask in the warm manure and sunny corners. 

 The fowls scratch industriously in the dung heaps, filling their 

 feathers with infected dust; they feed in the contaminated man- 

 gers, and all trail considerable distances to adjacent and even dis- 

 tant farms, thus spreading the infection. Every such animal found 

 at large on quarantined territory must be shot or otherwise put out 

 of the way. The duration of the disease is short, so that this 

 restriction is not oppressive, and for this reason the careless or 

 deliberate violator should be severely punished. He is making 

 himself responsible for, and should rightfully be held to make good, 

 all damages sustained by others through further extension of the 

 disease. 



Wild birds are not so easily dealt with. The now ubiquitous 

 English sparrow should be exterminated by shot, poison, night 

 fumigation, or trap ; crows, carrion crows, hawks, owls, and, above 

 all, buzzards, should be shot or scared off with painstaking care; 

 and the whole class of granivorous summer birds must be killed or 

 driven off in a similar manner. The only alternative would be to 

 keep all infected and suspected quadrupeds indoors and, together 

 with their manure, screened off from all possible access of birds. 



The exclusion of vermin must be equally rigid. Rats and mice, 

 rabbits, woodchucks, and squirrels are frequent visitors to the 

 feeding places, and are especially likely to carry away infection ; 

 but even carnivorous animals, like foxes, coyottes, weasles, minks, 

 and skunks, must lie excluded. Where any of these abound, shot 

 guns, traps, poison, ferrets, tarring or placing caustic in their holes, 

 may be resorted to according to the case. 



In some localities bears, and in other, partridges, prairie hens, 

 bob whites, pheasants, and, near New York City, the imported 

 English starling, must be looked after. The latter is particularly 

 dangerous from its habit of perching on the backs of animals to 

 feed on the surface parasites and the grubs that burrow under the 

 skin. 



