98 ECONOMIC MAMMALOGY 



less dogs should be destroyed as humanely as is reasonably possible, 

 for this, as well as for other reasons. 



In hydrophobia, prevention centers around the problem of muzzling the dogs. 

 This has been known for decades, yet the American people prefer to have 

 5000 persons, mostly children, bitten each year and a hundred or more deaths, 

 than to subject their dogs to the discomfort of muzzles and to destroy the 

 stray and worthless curs of the streets. 9 



Unfortunately, especially in the western United States, coyotes and 

 other wild animals have become infected, thus complicating the prob- 

 lem of the control of this disease. As coyotes are very important car- 

 riers in that region, and are also directly destructive to domestic stock 

 even when not infected, extensive campaigns against them have often 

 been necessary. It is reported that during the rabies epidemic among 

 wild mammals in the West in 1914-1915, $5,000,000 worth of stock 

 were killed by infected predatory mammals, chiefly coyotes, in one year 

 in Nevada alone, one rabid coyote having attacked 27 steers in one 

 feed lot, and 1500 people were bitten by rabid animals. 10 



Tularemia, or rabbit fever, which has been sometimes locally known 

 as deer-fly fever, a "debilitating, disabling and frequently fatal disease," 

 is serious enough to warrant very careful consideration. It is carried 

 especially by rabbits, but also by various rodents and other mammals, 

 as well as by some birds, and is easily transmitted by them to mankind. 

 Human cases have been recognized in nearly all of the states of the 

 United States, about five hundred definite cases having been already re- 

 ported, 4 per cent of which have proved fatal. It is identical with the 

 Japanese rabbit-borne "O'Hara's disease," and has been recognized also 

 in Russia and Siberia. 11 



Most of the human cases were derived directly from handling dis- 

 eased rabbits, and even the wearing of gloves does not appear to be 

 an absolute protection, but usually only a small percentage of the rab- 

 bits in the market are infected. It is said that a sure test of the disease 

 in rabbits is pin-head white specks on the liver and spleen. 12 In addition 

 to rabbits and hares, several species of ground squirrels, pine squirrels, 



9 Jones, On certain relations of the lower animals to human diseases, Science, 

 XLIV, 337-347, 1916. 



10 Bell, Hunting down stock killers, Yearbook U. S. Dept. Agric. for 1920, pp. 

 289-301. 



11 Simpson, Tularemia, N.Y., 1929 (technical, for physicians, etc.). American 

 Game (Bull. Amer. Game Protec. Assn.), xvii, 4-5, 1928. Science News Supplement 

 (in Science), March 8, 1929, p. x; March 22, 1929, p. xiv. California Fish and Game, 

 xiv, 157-158, 1928; xv, 256, 1929. 



12 Barnes, Rabbit fever or tularemia, Scientific Monthly, Nov., 1928, pp. 463-469. 



