XIV ''CRAMPS" IN YOUNG PHEASANTS 123 



both, a localised congested state of the periosteum, 

 often haemorrhage into this and into the surrounding 

 muscle ; the bone itself is thinned at these places or 

 completely dissociated either in a circular line com- 

 prising the whole circumference, or obliquely, so much 

 so that between the actual condition and what one 

 would consider a fracture — simple fracture in the 

 former, oblique or compound fracture in the latter — 

 there seemed a complete analogy. The first few birds 

 dead of the disease that I dissected at Blairquhan 

 showed the fracture at the upper or lower end of the 

 shaft of the femur and tibia, particularly the former, so 

 pronounced that Mr. Douglas himself in the next few 

 birds could easily discover this condition. Haemor- 

 rhage into the periosteum and the surrounding muscle 

 occurs oftener in the upper and lower ends of the 

 shaft of the femur than in the tibia, and chiefly in 

 connection with oblique fracture. I thought at first 

 that the condition of the bones might have been 



' produced accidentally, either by the foster-mother or 

 by other animals attacking the little pheasants. But 

 Mr. Douglas assured me that this is quite out of 

 the question, and, in fact, impossible that such a thing 



■ should happen unknown to him and his assistants, the 

 rearing being carefully watched night and day. The 

 large number of birds that died from the same disease 

 during June of that year, day after day, and that had 



