DISEASES OF GAME BIRDS 



373 



are in agreement with Dr. Klein's conclusions as they stand, 

 but it only needs one factor to be assumed to bring them into 

 agreement, as will be seen by the following table : 



A list of supposed causes of grouse 

 disease that are in disagreement 

 with Dr. Klein's conclusions. 



A list of supposed causes of grouse 

 disease that are in agreement 

 with Dr. Klein's conclusions, pro- 

 vided subcutaneous injection of 

 the bacilli by an insect is assumed 

 probably the midge fly. 



Tapeworm. 



Cobbold's Strongylus. 



Bad food. 



Over stocking. 



Bad water. 



Wet warm weather. 



Bog or floe ground. 



Tapeworm. 



Cobbold's Strongylus. 



Bad food. 



Bad water. 



Wet warm weather. 



Bog or floe ground. 



The first four acting by debility to 

 impoverish the blood and the 

 plumage, so as to allow the 

 midge to get at the skin, especially 

 of the legs. The last two acting 

 by enabling the insects to breed. 



It may be remarked that it is no answer to say that tape- 

 worm cannot be a cause of predisposition to disease, because 

 it is always present. It is greatly more in evidence some 

 years than in others. The author never in any other year 

 than 1873 saw quantities of shot grouse from which tapeworms 

 exuded in yards of entangled mass from the shot wounds of 

 the dead birds. Then, however, they did so, and had to be 

 withdrawn from the birds before the latter could be bagged 

 The birds could not have been left upon the moor, because the 

 dogs would have gone back for them. Yet with all these 

 worms the only evidence of disease was an absence of much 

 leg feathering. The owner of Glenbuchat has been good 

 enough to tell the author that disease broke out there in 1872 

 after the shooting season, but he never before heard of any 

 disease in that year, and as a matter of fact the grouse at 

 Aldourie, in Inverness-shire, not far away, bred well in 1873, 

 and only were attacked by the disease later than the shooting 

 season of that year. But even 1874, tne great disease year, 



