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 sarcosporidse, 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 (pIAIRLTXG). 



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 gray-brown pediculus-like 

 parasites known as hairling. 



That some adequate idea of their numbers may be gained, I 

 need only quote from the daily medical report of May i6th, 

 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 hsematopinus (louse) is sel- 



