Whitetailed Deer 91 



to be a tape-worm fully 150 feet in length. This Deer was very 

 poor."'" 



Writing of the Whitetail in Texas, A. Y. Walton, says:" 



"They continued to be very abundant in all the country 

 towards the coast until 1856, when an epizootic distemper, 

 called "black tongue," broke out among them and killed 

 them by the thousands. I have known this disease to occur in 

 Louisiana and Texas, and have examined subjects affected by 

 it. The most marked symptoms seem to be a general emacia- 

 tion and wasting away of the system, a mucous discharge from 

 the nostrils, and a sloughing of the hoofs, all evidently accom- 

 panied with a fever and thirst, for the dead were found mostly 

 at or near the water." 



Many years ago tuberculosis broke out among the Deer 

 of a certain section of New England and, according to the late 

 Jenness Richardson, destroyed many. It was a common thing 

 in the evening, he said, to hear the Deer coughing in the 

 woods. E. T. Murch, of Bangor, Maine, tells me that in 1901 

 there was much lung trouble among the Maine Deer. The 

 victims were usually the older ones. 



At Woburn Abbey I learned from the Duchess of Bedford 

 that many Virginian Deer have died there of a parasitic disease 

 of the lungs and stomach. 



There have been, doubtless, many destructive epidemics 

 among the Deer of America, but the right conjunction of 

 disease and bacteriologist has not yet occurred, so that we have 

 no authentic details. In this connection Judge Caton's ob- 

 servations on the Deer in his parks are the best available. 

 He says'** "that they are liable to distempers in the wild state, 

 either epidemic or contagious, which sometimes carry off great 

 numbers, we may not doubt, as we sometimes receive pretty 

 well authenticated accounts of such calamities. Such accounts 



'^On writing to the hunter and his guide, Anthony Wenzel, I learned, further, that 

 the end of the tape-worm came out of the bullet hole when the shot was fired, and 

 continued unbroken to the carcass, in which were still two or three quarts of the 

 parasite. 



"Forest and Stream, June 15, 1895, p. 485. 



^Antelope and Deer of America, 1877, pp. 341-3. 



