56, 



IT be Storv> of BirDs.2)catb. 



By W. Geo. Cresweui., M.D., L.R.C.P., F.Z.S., etc. 



(Continued from page 42.) 



T f THE following iiLStaiice among smaller birds is 

 I onl)'- too familiar. A Spervwphila (species not 

 ^^ determined) was received from a well-known 

 dealer. It was very dull in eye, rough in 

 feather, and apparently voracious in appetite, though 

 on being carefully watched it was seen to be only 

 picking about amongst the food and eating scarcely 

 anything. After a few hours it died. On examination 

 the liver was congested and infiltrated with so called 

 " tubercle." The spleen was enormously enlarged and 

 thickly studded with the same. The intestines were 

 dark in colour. The cheesy nodules were also present 

 in the throat ; the brain was very congested, and there 

 was a ruptured vessel on its surface (apoplexy). No 

 tubercle bacillus could be discovered, but the liver and 

 spleen were crowded with the bacilli of Septicaemia. 



One day I had sent to me for operation a Canary 

 which was stated to have a large cancer of the neck. 

 This tumour, which had been gradually increasing for 

 three months — (the bird itself was not more than 

 seven or eight months old) — was i^ inch long, f inch 

 in its greatest diameter, and was rounded and pendu- 

 lous, evidently a cyst of some sort. The bird was 

 puffed out, yet very thin, panted for breath, with the 

 beak open and the eye half closed, and had the vent 

 feathers matted together with excrement. Since it 

 was obviously not in a condition to successfully with- 

 stand the shock of an operation, it was killed with 

 chloroform. The tumour proved to be a dual cyst, the 

 lower one being completely encapsuled and containing 

 a hard cheesy mass with a still harder and lighter 

 coloured core. The upper portion was also encap- 

 suled except as to where it sprung from the space 



