122 NEW YORK ZOOLOGICAL SOCIETY. 



hope that the general status of animal health will be very mate- 

 rially added to both as regards contagious and non-contagious 

 conditions. 



Owing mainly to our incompleted system of observing and 

 recording disease, we found it necessary to confine our first an- 

 nual report more particularly to those conditions of a sporadic 

 and non-contagious nature, as accidents and illness inseparable 

 from ordinary life, enhanced by the nature of the animals and 

 their changed surroundings. The present report, by reason of 

 the number and importance of the contagious and infective 

 diseases, will give those diseases entire precedence in this report ; 

 other conditions being treated in a purely cursory manner. 



In treating of these various contagions it would be manifestly 

 improper to assume or even directly infer that their numbers 

 are unaccountably high, considering that the Park at the present 

 time is in the evolutionary stage, practically doubling its exhibits 

 year by year without more elaborate and costly safeguards 

 against their introduction in purchased animals, the majority of 

 which possess great susceptibility to, and low recuperative 

 powers from, such diseases, animals which almost invariably 

 come from dealers' collections, through channels both of which 

 are known to be, in the great majority of cases, very constantly 

 infected with animal diseases of this nature. 



It is a fact worth bearing well in mind that even the intro- 

 duction of an infected ferret may under unfavorable conditions be 

 at any time the direct cause of the greatest mortality among 

 lions. I must urgently suggest that even more thought be given 

 to the matter, first of accepting or purchasing animals of all 

 kinds without due consideration not only of their present health, 

 but the open prevalence of disease in the surroundings as well, 

 and that, if possible, more systematic arrangements be made for 

 the isolation of new arrivals, which isolation should, in my opin- 

 ion, be for fifteen days, and made most complete and without 

 any exception whatsoever for all carnivora coming into the Park. 

 My specific reasons for these suggestions will become obvious 

 as we treat of the conditions which have prevailed during the 

 past year. 



In reporting the important diseases of contagious nature I 

 would be allowed to proceed in the order of their clinical im- 

 portance, which in this field of study I find to be best estimated, 

 first, by the ease with which the animals may by it become in- 

 fected, secondly, the rapidity of its dissemination and average 

 death rate, and finally the number of species of animals subject 



