122 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL. SOCIE RY: 
hope that the general status of animal health will be very mate- 
rially added to both as regards contagious and non-contagious 
conditions. 
Owing mainly to our incompleted system of observing and 
recording disease, we found it necessary to confine our first an- 
nual report more particularly to those conditions of a sporadic 
and non-contagious nature, as accidents and illness inseparable 
from ordinary life, enhanced by the nature of the animals and 
their changed surroundings. The present report, by reason of 
the number and importance of the contagious and infective 
diseases, will give those diseases entire precedence in this report; 
other conditions being treated in a purely cursory manner. 
In treating of these various contagions it would be manifestly 
improper to assume or even directly infer that their numbers 
are unaccountably high, considering that the Park at the present 
time is in the evolutionary stage, practically doubling its exhibits 
year by year without more elaborate and costly safeguards 
against their introduction in purchased animals, the majority of 
which possess great susceptibility to, and low recuperative 
powers from, such diseases, animals which almost invariably 
come from dealers’ collections, through channels both of which 
are known to be, in the great majority of cases, very constantly 
infected with animal diseases of this nature. 
It is a fact worth bearing well in mind that even the intro- 
duction of an infected ferret may under unfavorable conditions be 
at any time the direct cause of the greatest mortality among 
lions. I must urgently suggest that even more thought be given 
to the matter, first of accepting or purchasing animals of all 
kinds without due consideration not only of their present health, 
but the open prevalence of disease in the surroundings as well, 
and that, if possible, more systematic arrangements be made for 
the isolation of new arrivals, which isolation should, in my opin- 
ion, be for fifteen days, and made most complete and without 
any exception whatsoever for all carnivora coming into the Park. 
My specific reasons for these suggestions will become obvious 
as we treat of the conditions which have prevailed during the 
past year. 
In reporting the important diseases of contagious nature I 
would be allowed to proceed in the order of their clinical im- 
portance, which in this field of study I find to be best estimated, 
first, by the ease with which the animals may by it become in- 
fected, secondly, the rapidity of its dissemination and average 
death rate, and finally the number of species of animals subject 
