THE NEW FORESTRY. 25 



which is undoubtedly derived from the employment of diseased 

 hens as hatchers and foster-mothers. Even if one hen with 

 this contagious skin disease is put down in a field where there 

 are numerous broods of young pheasants, her young contract 

 the disease from her and spread it over the whole field. The 

 mouth and throat and the skin of the under parts of all hens 

 employed to hatch young pheasants should be healthy. If 

 there is any grey friable deposit on the skin, that hen should 

 be rejected ; and she ought not to be returned to a farm-yard, 

 as the disease is particularly contagious. 



" The majority of the deaths that have occurred during the 

 present season have not been caused by either one or the 

 other of the diseases above named, but by a complaint which is 

 similar to, if not identical with, that known as fowl enteritis. 

 The chief symptoms of this, in young birds, is a disorganised 

 condition of the intestines, which. are red in the first stages of 

 the disease, and rapidly become dark and highly discoloured. 

 This disease was also minutely investigated by Dr. Klein, and 

 the bacilli producing it were cultivated by him and introduced 

 into other animals. 



" There is no remedy that can be applied successfully in 

 any of these cases of disease of young pheasants. The only 

 methods to be adopted are those of prevention ; cure is alto- 

 gether out of the question. It therefore behoves us to consider 

 what are the best methods of prevention that can be employed, 

 and what are the causes of the large losses, by disease, that 

 have been so prevalent during the present season. I attribute 

 them altogether to a neglect of the sanitary conditions which 

 are indispensable to successful pheasant rearing. There can be 

 no doubt whatever that a frequent source of disease is breeding 

 from birds. titbit have been reared perhaps for several generations 

 in inclosed pens. These cannot be so healthy or vigorous as 

 birds hatched from eggs laid by birds in the open. Then, 

 again, overcrowding of the parent birds, more especially when 

 in pens, is a, fertile source of disease. Birds when shut up in 

 confined areas have to pick up their food from the soil which 

 is tainted by the evacuations of the birds, and, in cases of 

 disease, charged with bacilli. Again, in many instances the 

 young birds are rendered weakly by being hatched in over- 

 heated dry nests, in tiers of boxes placed on shelves in 

 hatching houses. The air becomes foul, the eggs want the 

 necessary moisture which naturally arises from the soil, the 

 hens are irritable by being over-heated and swarming with 

 vermin, and b.ad clutches of weakly birds are the result." 



