CHAPTER V 



THE AUTUMNAL DISEASE 



In 1888, 1889, and 1890, I received, thanks to the 

 editor of the Field, during August, September, Octo- 

 ber, November, and even December, many grouse 

 from various parts of Scotland and the north of 

 England which had died of the grouse disease, that 

 is to say in which, on post-mortem examination, the 

 congestion of one or both lungs, the congestion of 

 the liver, the small dark spleen, and the patchy redness 

 of the intestine and the peritoneum, were present. 

 In many of these birds the heart's blood was examined 

 for the presence of the specific microbe, both in cover- 

 glass preparations and by culture, and, unlike the birds 

 dead during the spring and early summer in which the 

 microbes are absent from the blood of the general 

 circulation, the heart's blood of those birds always 

 contained them in large numbers. In fresh speci- 

 mens of the heart's blood they can be identified as 

 oval or rod -shaped single or dumb-bell bacteria, 

 some actively motile. As a matter of fact it was 



