138 A COLONY IN THE MAKING chap. 



outbreaks goes up to 80 per cent. Animals which 

 have had the disease and recover are immune. Ticks 

 which, having satiated themselves with blood, drop off 

 are thereby purged of the disease, and the eggs of that 

 insect cannot produce progeny which can themselves at 

 first directly impart the same. Game form a suitable 

 host to these ticks, since, though immune themselves to 

 the disease, they purge every tick which gorges herself 

 at their expense. Those people, therefore, who would 

 find in an outbreak of East Coast fever an excuse for 

 the destruction of the game, do so in ignorance of the 

 real facts. Prevention lies in fencing, in dipping, or 

 by obtaining a serum with which to inoculate. To 

 attain this last end — obviously the best method of the 

 three, if practicable — the disease had to be transmitted 

 by inoculation from a sick to a healthy beast. After 

 defying research for eight years, this stage was reached 

 in 1909. It is now reported that the requisite serum 

 has been discovered. If this proves correct, the 

 greatest, one might almost say the only, deterrent to 

 stock raising in the Protectorate has disappeared. 



Gastro-enteritis (Coccidiosis) was first definitely 

 known in the Protectorate in 1908, but the symptoms 

 and post-mortem appearances are so similar to those of 

 rinderpest that there is little doubt that the two 

 diseases have existed side by side for, at all events, 

 some years. It differs from the latter — according 

 to Mr. D. R. Brandt in the Agricultural Journal 

 — in that: (1) Full-grown animals frequently recover; 

 (2) it is the young stock that die, and in them anaemia 

 is nearly always present ; (3) the rinderpest odour is 

 absent ; (4) diarrhoea is not so severe ; (5) the speed 

 of the disease is slower. The best treatment is a 

 purgative given early in the attack. Prevention is 



