124 LETTERS TO YOUNG SHOOTERS LETTER 



Keep the camphor water ready mixed in large 

 bottles, and serve it round every morning ; though 

 the birds dislike the odour, fortunately they will drink 

 it without suffering ill effects, and when they are once 

 impregnated with camphor, the gapeworms will not 

 live in their bodies. 



There is no medicinal cure for gapes ; and camphor 

 water is the only preventive in my experience. I 

 have purposely placed for experiment a few birds in a 

 field infested with the gapeworm, and never had a 

 single case of the malady, from having dosed the 

 chicks from the first with this lotion. If camphor is 

 given when the chicks are actually suffering from 

 4 gapes ' it is useless ; there is not then time for them 

 to absorb it into the system. 



primarily affected by the disease, is as yet undecided. How the birds 

 first obtain the worms is all guesswork, though many wise articles 

 have been written on the subject. When gapes is rampant in one 

 field, why it does not spread to the next is a mystery ; or why it should 

 so often attack hand-reared birds and rarely the wild-bred ones 

 is another puzzle. Many keepers imagine the worms are located in 

 the gullet of a bird ; it is to the windpipe they cluster. The doctoring 

 of a bird for gapes is usually down its throat, which affects its 

 stomach, but not its windpipe, where the disease is. For this reason 

 any medicine to cause a cure of gapes must be one that renovates the 

 blood of the bird a long process, and which can only be done, if 

 the birds live to benefit by it, through a change of soil and natural 

 food. Any ' dodge ' for curing gapes I have tried is generally of so 

 violent a nature that it usually kills the patients ; and if the dodge 

 takes the form of a powder inserted into the coops at night, it will 

 often cause the hens such discomfort that they will bounce about and 

 trample any chicks beyond recovery that have not already been 

 choked to death by the 'patent gape disinfectant.' 



