342 APPENDIX. 



diet in such cases ; and I know of a surgeon's giving boiled milk 

 with great success, in the West Indies, to patients suffering from 

 diarrhoea. 



" But the most formidable disease from which the young pheasant 

 suffers is that known by the name of ' the gapes : ' so termed from 

 the frequent gaping efforts of the bird to inhale a mouthful of air. 

 Chickens and turkeys are equally liable to be affected by it ; and it 

 may be remarked, that a situation which has been used, for many 

 successive seasons, as a nursery ground, is more apt to be visited 

 with this plague, than one which has only recently been so employed. 

 Indeed, I have observed that it seldom makes its appearance on a 

 lawn or meadow during the first season of its occupation ; and, there- 

 fore, when practicable, it is strongly to be recommended, that fresh 

 ground should be applied to the purpose every year : and when this 

 cannot be done, that a quantity of common salt should be sown 

 broadcast over the surface of the earth, after the birds have left it in 

 the autumn." He elsewhere describes the gapes as that " dreadful 

 scourge, which, like certain diseases that affect the human subject, 

 seems to have been engendered and fostered by excessive population 

 within a limited district." 



" Dissection has proved that the latent cause of this malady is a 

 minute worm of the genius fasciola, which is found adhering to the 

 internal part of the windpipe, or trachea." Then Mr. Knox explains 

 how this worm may be destroyed; (and only by such means, the 

 most delicate operator being unable to extract it without materially 

 injuring the young bird) viz. by fumigating with tobacco-smoke, 

 according to the method (which he fully describes) recommended by 

 Colonel Montagu. If the worm is not destroyed, the death of the 

 bird ensues " by suffocation from the highly inflamed state of the 

 respiratory apparatus." 



I once kept many guinea-birds when abroad; and I am now 

 convinced that I should have succeeded in rearing a far greater num- 

 ber, had I adopted more closely the mode of feeding, &c., here 

 recommended for young pheasants. 



In July, '57, I saw in a large clover field at Sandling, East Kent, 

 820 pheasant chicks which had been reared by M n under sixty- 

 six common hens. It was a very interesting sight. I accompanied 

 him round all the coops. They stood about twenty paces apart, and 

 I could not detect a single bird with a drooping wing or of sickly 

 appearance. He told me most positively that he had not lost one by 

 disease, but a few had been trodden under foot by careless, awkward 

 hens, and, what seems curious, some few chicks on quitting the shell 

 had been intentionally killed by the very hens which had hatched 

 them. A hatching hen will sometimes thus destroy ducklings, but 

 these are far more unlike her natural progeny than are pheasant 



chicks. M n found that game-fowls make the best mothers 



Cochin-china the worst. He has a prejudice, how doctors differ ! 

 against maggots and ants' nests. However, he has a right to his 

 notions, for he lost hardly any birds in the year '56, out of the 400 

 and upwards that broke the shell. He devotes himself to what, with 



