"GROUSE DISEASE" 197 



He was handicapped by this belief in the epidemic theory, but we have to 

 confess that it is difficult to accommodate his observations to the belief in 

 Strongvlosis, for he says that there was an " absence, in most cases, of the signs 

 of fatal parasitism, such as inanition producing the pining condition, actual 

 perforation, morbid appearance of the muscular tissues, etc." l 



For if most of the cases that he examined were marked by an absence 

 of inanition, they differed very materially indeed from all the cases of 

 birds found dead or dying within the years of the present Inquiry ; 

 almost all of which were " piners " to a greater or less degree. But, writers 



kept no 



like all other early writers, he produces no particulars as to weights, record of 



. . -IT i weights. 



and in the absence of these it is impossible to accept as a fact that 

 inanition was absent, knowing as we now do, how exceedingly misleading are 

 the external appearances of many of these cases. 



Klein did not believe in two distinct diseases, and described the autumn 

 and winter cases as having pathological appearances identical with . 



those found in the unwasted Grouse which had died of disease during not recog- 



nise two 

 the spring and early summer. He believed these autumn and winter distinct 



diseases. 



victims to be sporadic cases of " the real Grouse Disease," which occurs 

 in the spring and early summer. Nowhere throughout his whole book can any 

 suggestion be found that goes even so far as Dr Andrew Wilson's view, tha-t a 

 few birds at least may succumb to Strongylosis, or even to general Helminthiasis. 



Klein appears to include all the Grouse which he described with the appear- 

 ance of a pneumonic lesion in the lung, at any time of the year, as victims 

 of the true " Grouse Disease," and by this he meant in every case the acute 

 infectious pneumonia which he was the first to describe in detail, but which 

 the Committee now believes has no existence, and was founded on a misinter- 

 pretation of post-mortem changes in the dead bird. 



What then were the appearances upon which he relied in making a diagnosis- 

 of acute infectious pneumonia ? The points 



He sums them up once or twice on pp. 15-19 of his book on 



, ^ -p.- >i his theories. 



Grouse Disease. 



" The chief changes are undoubtedly those found in the lungs. 

 " (a) In emaciated birds the disease of the lungs is, as a rule, but not without 

 exception, not very extensive, only a portion of one or both lungs being 

 congested. 



1 Macdonald, "Grouse Disease," p. 148. 



