1 ^4 surgeon" had been received for publication October 26. In 

 accepting it Hektoen had written: "It is needless to say that 

 we are thankful to you for letting us have this fine article." 

 Fine it was — with no mention of the Livermore squirrel and 

 no statement to make clear that gunmen had been sent after 

 the ground squirrels because of it; no mention either of the 

 fact that the catch had been brought to him for primary 

 bacteriological examination. Wherry opened his article by 

 saying: 



The fact that a number of ground squirrels have been proven 

 to be infected with Bacillus pestis in two widely separated 

 sections of the state of California is perhaps the most serious 

 feature of the plague situation in America. . . . Hillsides, 

 railroad cuts, river banks, and fields are literally perforated 

 by their complicated systems of subterranean tunnels. . . . 

 The Arctomyinae . . . reach from the Atlantic to the Pacific 

 ocean. 



An historical sketch of plague as seen in squirrel types else- 

 where in the world followed, whereafter a "review of the 

 events" which led to its discovery in California's representa- 

 tive. Here was a rehash of all the terrestrial instances of human 

 plague with careful note of how all the boys who had seen 

 them had guessed their emanation from the ground squirrels. 

 Wherry's discovery had merely freshened their memories. 

 Rupert Blue said: "While investigating the origin of one of 

 the early cases of plague (Bock 1903) . . . I was impressed 

 with the possibility of ground squirrel infection in Contra 

 Costa county." Wherry's article gladly let each man have his 

 glory; outsiders could quite naturally ask: If so prescient in 

 epidemiology why never a suggestion even, regarding squirrel 

 control in eight years? 



But seven of Wherry's twenty-three pages went to state- 

 ment of what he had done; and a goodly part of these centered 

 on praise of passed assistant surgeon D H Currie's (unpub- 

 lished) laboratory inoculations of plague into ground squirrels 

 and to citation of passed assistant surgeon Geo W McCoy's 

 confirmatory diagnoses. More concerned with epidemiology 

 than with priority, he described how plague, fleas, squirrels, 

 rats and men now, struggled upon a common battlefield. 



