128 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 
duced this condition in them to a biological rather than a patho- 
logical one requiring extended study and treatment. 
While this low organism has been known to invade the cardiac 
musculature of the domestic animals, this tendency is so very 
slight as to pass almost unnoticed, the number of cases, however, 
which have occurred in your elk and caribou, where this condition 
had apparently located itself almost exclusively in the cardiac 
muscles, tending to cause extensive destruction of their substance, 
and even at times complete obliteration of well-marked areas of 
the same, unmistakably determined the death of the animal in 
several cases. 
Since the consensus of opinion relegates this parasite to the 
order of the sarcosporide, and the same class of animals suffer 
as are infected with lung worms, I am free to maintain that what 
I have already suggested regarding the improved sanitation of 
the ranges will equally apply to this interesting subject which, 
of all diseases we have been called upon to treat in the animals, 
proves most conclusively the frequent tendencies of disease well 
known and of little moment in domestic animals to be the means 
of great loss when attacking wild animals in collections. 
I would commend a careful perusal of your pathologist’s in- 
structive report relative to this peculiar and somewhat unique 
disease. 
TRICHODECTES CERVUS (HAIRLING). 
Owing to the general unthriftiness of the Virginia deer, ac- 
companied by irritation, one of them was secured for examina- 
tion, when they were discovered to be infected in the skin to 
the greatest degree with the peculiar Stay-brown pediculus-like 
parasites leone as hairling. 
That some adequate idea of their numbers may be gained, I 
need only quote from the daily medical report of May 16th, 
which reads, “examination was made and the organisms were 
found distributed mainly over the back, neck, and flanks in num- 
bers so great that a dime piece would cover ten parasites in 
almost any place on those areas.” 
Recourse was had to the application of a parasiticide in the 
form of creoline and linseed oil, with the result that examination 
made upon the fourth day showed no living hairlings present. 
While there are many species of hairlings widely distributed 
among the different domestic animals throughout the world, their 
careful clinical differentiation from hzmatopinus (louse) is sel- 
