104 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



very circumspect regarding the receiving of animals, especially 

 from tropical countries, and introducing them into our collec- 

 tions without every effort being made to demonstrate the pres- 

 ence or absence of this disease, which beyond much doubt has 

 the power, under favorable conditions, to destroy the entire pri- 

 mate collection. 



That which I am inclined to regard as the third most impor- 

 tant condition of our animals requiring special treatment was 

 intestinal indigestion, mainly confined to the adult buffalo. 



INTESTINAL CATARRH OF BUFFALO. 



Within the past six months there have been under treatment 

 one chronic and five sub-chronic cases of this troublesome dis- 

 order, all of which have been isolated and relieved, after longer 

 or shorter periods of dieting and medication. 



This condition proves particularly troublesome from the diffi- 

 culty at times found in isolating such animals, in the selection 

 of agents which they will take voluntarily in the food or water, 

 and, above all, in the selection of those remedies which will, in 

 non-toxic doses, pass through a stomach containing, as it often- 

 times does, sixty gallons of food matter, and reach the diseased 

 intestine in a state capable of exerting therapeutic action. 



Of the many agents commonly administered in the domestic 

 ruminant for combating like disturbances, the only one we have 

 found to be of any real value whatsoever was tannigen (acetyl- 

 tannin), through the use of which we have been enabled to suc- 

 cessfully cope with these cases. 



From the excellent health of our buffalo herd during the 

 warm months of summer, and the number of these intestinal 

 cases reported late in the autumn and early winter, along with 

 the benefits at once derived by corraHng and feeding exclusively 

 upon dried herds-grass, I am convinced that the disturbance had 

 its foundation in indigestion, pure and simple, from taking frozen 

 grasses. Although the microscopic examination of the di- 

 gestive refuse from time to time showed the presence of several 

 kinds of small worms, their inconstancy in the actually suffering 

 would tend to disprove their pathogenic nature. 



The marked tendency of these cases to assume chronicity 

 should, I think, at all times cause us to put the animals under 

 treatment. Not only does the impaired digestion rapidly show 



