6 



tick, the common rice or dog tick, usually 

 attached below the jaw of the bird or to the 

 eyelid or to some other position where the beak 

 cannot reach it. Ticks are responsible for the 

 transference of a very fatal epizootic termed 

 Spirillosis in fowls in the Sudan, but ticks are 

 not common on the grouse, and the Inquiry 

 has as yet traced no disease to them. Curiously 

 enough a common cheese or flour mite was 

 from time to time found in considerable numbers 

 on the skin of the grouse, and apparently these 

 mites sucked the blood of their host. Finally, 

 there are a couple of true flies, the well-known 

 grouse fly which is apt to crawl up the sleeves of 

 those who handle grouse in the early autumn, 

 and one other fly* whose larva lives in grouse 

 droppings. All these creatures have been 

 carefully searched for the larva of the grouse 

 tapeworms, but so far with no definite 

 success. 



Of the fifteen endoparasites but four or five 

 demand attention ; the others are com- 

 paratively rare or innocuous, and some, such as 

 the gape or forked worm so fatal to phea- 

 sants, are not normally parasites of the grouse ; 

 by some accident they have got into the wrong 

 Paradise. 



At the time the present Inquiry commenced 

 to inquire there were but two worms de- 

 scribed as being in the aliment ary canal of the 

 grouse the large tapeworm which lives in the 

 small intestine all the year round, known to 

 every sportsman, and a slender threadworm 

 which inhabits the paired caeca, or blind-guts, 

 which are unusually large in the grouse and play 

 a very important part in its digestion. The 

 latter worm under certain conditions, and when 

 present in considerable numbers, is associated 



