INFECTIOUS DISEASES OF GEESE AND DUCKS 245 
Glucose and lactose bouillon are uniformly clouded but gas forma- 
tion does not occur. In lactose there is no change in reaction, but 
in glucose there is a slight reduction of alkalinity. 
A luxuriant growth occurs in the form of a whitish yellow layer 
on Léffler’s serum. On potato a thin shiny, yellowish white layer is 
observed at 24 to 48 hours, which later becomes brownish in color. 
Growth does not occur on Drigalski-Conradi nor Endo plates. Milk 
is not coagulated. Riemer and Léffler both regard the organism as 
belonging to the influenza group. 
Pathogenicity. The organism is markedly pathogenic for 
geese, which are infected most certainly by intramuscular injection. 
The musculature in the vicinity of the point of inoculation is colored 
grayish white over a large area. An attempt by Frosch and Birn- 
baum to infect a grown goose by feeding with organs of a goose dead 
of the disease, failed, as did a similar experiment by Riemer in 
which bouillon culture was used. In neither case were goslings 
available. 
The latter author observed that either intramuscular or subeu- 
taneous injection caused sickness followed by death in from 36 to 
72 hours. In artificially infected birds the fibrinous exudate on 
the liver may not be found, due to the unnatural rapidity of the 
course of the disease. 
Rabbits, gray and mixed rats, mice, white mice, hens, and pigeons 
are refractory to inoculation. Guinea pigs have succumbed to an 
intraperitoneal inoculation of a suspension of the growth from one 
agar culture. They withstand smaller amounts, such as 1 to 3 
loops. 
Riemer succeeded in infecting an 8 weeks old duck by intra- 
muscular injection of a suspension from an agar culture. Of three , 
grown ducks, only one became infected by intramuscular injection. 
M’Fadyean in England examined a few geese dead from a septi- 
cemic infection. Smears from the blood contained great numbers 
of organisms which were cylindrical rather than ovoid in outline. 
Beyond a slight inflammation of the intestine, no lesions were ob- 
served. Agar tubes seeded from the heart blood failed to show 
growth, and cultures kept under anaerobic conditions likewise failed. 
The organism was Gram negative, and was not pathogenic to the 
mouse, the rabbit, the hen, the guinea pig, the pigeon or to one duck. 
Transmission to a goose by feeding failed, but succeeded when sub- 
cutaneous inoculation was employed. The writer concluded that 
the disease was not fowl cholera. None of the observations made 
deny the possibility that the infection was exudative septicemia. 
