SEVENTH ANNUAL REPORT. 123 
to its ravages, and from such considerations do not hesitate to 
group them: First, distemper; second, tuberculosis; third, 
actinomycosis ; fourth, verminous pneumonia; fifth, Rainey’s cor- 
puscles; sixth, hairlings; seventh, filaria sanguinus. 
DISTEALPER: 
The outbreak of distemper, from which our post-mortem 
records show a total of ten deaths, was beyond reasonable doubt 
traced to the illness of a small coyote, which was noticed to be 
suffering from that disease within a few days from its admis- 
sion to the Park, and while itself recovering from the compara- 
tively mild course of the malady was the agent of its dissemina- 
tion, either mediately or immediately, in most malignant form 
to others of the carnivora, where its ravages were only brought 
to an end by the most rigid isolation, disinfection, etc. Of the 
animals infected, fully ninety per cent. were lost. 
In accounting distemper the disease of first importance, we 
must take fully into consideration the fact that it has not been 
possible up to the present for any one to write its correct etiology. 
Hence the difficulty in formulating a rational and successful 
treatment for the same, even in domestic carnivora, which easily 
admit of close study and treatment. 
Strange as it may appear, while the mortality from this disease 
is found to be fully fifty per cent. higher in such of the domestic 
carnivora as may have suffered from a marked insufficiency or 
entire absence of meat in the diet, my experience both in the 
Park and elsewhere confirms my belief that notwithstanding all 
possible hygienic and medical attention the wild carnivora, or 
such of them as are subject to this disease while in captivity, 
will continue to suffer appalling mortality regardless of their 
meat diet, since this disease even in the domestic dog, like typhus 
fever of man, destroys life greatly by reason of the rapid pa- 
renchymatous degeneration of all the secretory and excretory 
organs, and it belongs to the things most infrequent in this work 
to recognize organs of animals possessing the characteristics of 
healthy structure, all being alike more or less advanced in de- 
generation, regardless of what may have led up to the imme- 
diate cause of death. 
Parenchymatous degeneration of various kinds in the organs 
of wild animals may, and undoubtedly does at times, exist for 
years without giving any appreciable symptoms, but will con- 
tinue to increase mortality from all general and specific disease 
