84 TECHNICAL BULLETIN 5. 



susceptibility of young stock to the Bad. sanguinarium type of infection, 

 and appears to substantiate the work of Dr. Hadlej', who states that he 

 has examined large numbers of cultures derived from j'oung stock, but 

 has not encountered among them the Bad. sanguinarium type. 



In this laboratory hundreds of agglutination tests have been made to 

 demonstrate the interagglutinability of Bad. pullormn with Bad. sangui- 

 narium, B. typhosus, B. paratyphosus A, and B. paratyphosus B. The 

 results obtained here agree with those from other laboratories: i.e., that 

 the agglutinative tests are sufficiently definite for grouping the fowl typhoid 

 and pullorum types together, both demonstrating the same intimate re- 

 lation to tj^phoid bacilli. In every test made, the Bad. pullorum immune 

 serum agglutinates typhoid antigen better than typhoid serum agglutinates 

 pullormn antigen. Bad. sanguinarium immune serum agglutinates Bad. 

 pullorum much better than it does typhoid. There has never been demon- 

 strated any indication of an affinity of interagglutinability between B. 

 avisepticus (fowl cholera) and the pullorum and sanguinarium types. While 

 it is true that by our present methods it is difficult to differentiate san- 

 guinarium and pullorum by agglutination, this does not mean that appli- 

 cation of the test will not yield valuable results. Already, from the work 

 of three years, the typical maltose-dextrine-dulcite positive anaerogenic 

 fowl typhoid organism has been isolated six times, and in this studj^ more 

 than 600 specimens were examined. This indicates that fowl typhoid is 

 not widespread, at least in Massachusetts. 



From the preceding biochemical data the establishment of Bad. pullorum 

 and Bad. sanguinarium as separate tyj^es is justifiable. Therefore if it 

 can be proven that breeding birds showing a positive agglutination reaction 

 may lay eggs, from which are hatched chicks developing white diarrhoea 

 sjmaptoms, and at death the internal organs yield cultures which demon- 

 strate morphologically an organism which is slender, non-motile, gram- 

 negative, gelatine non-liquefying, and is aerogenic, demonstrating no 

 acidity in maltose, dextrine and dulcite, the agglutination test would not 

 be invalid as an economic measure in the identification of this infection. 

 With this in mind, an experiment was carried out to this end. 



Twenty breeding flocks were selected, all showing positively reacting 

 birds, and the following spring all the dead chicks from these places were 

 examined bacteriologicallj^ with special reference to identifying the small 

 gram-negative, maltose-dextrine-dulcite negative organism which was 

 aerogenic. The following table shows the details of the tests: — 



