1 62 Diseases of Pheasants . 



during the breathing of the bird had escaped under the skin, 

 distending it to the extent described. This rupture of an air 

 cell might have arisen spontaneously or from some injury. In 

 either case it was not necessarily fatal. If the keeper had 

 made one or two small punctures of the skin at different parts of 

 the body the air would have escaped, and the bird in all 

 probabihty would have recovered ; but it was so distended 

 that it could not even feed itself, and the crop and intestines, 

 although perfectly healthy, were destitute of food. Such 

 cases are not very uncommon, but, as they usually arise from 

 accident, it is remarkable that in this case several should have 

 occurred amongst the birds in one locality. The cases are 

 usually perfectly isolated. 



It not infrequently happens that large numbers of young 

 pheasants die of mysterious ailments, the causes of which 

 are very difficult to determine. When they have been ascer- 

 tained, they have been occasionally traced to some injurious 

 substances taken as food. In one case that came under 

 notice the destructive agent was sheep's wool. A correspondent 

 wrote, stating that during six weeks he lost upwards of 300 

 young pheasants from no apparent cause, but that subsequently 

 he received a letter from his gamekeeper, who wrote : " I have 

 found out the cause of the pheasants dying. The farmer kept 

 his sheep so long upon that piece of ground before I had the 

 use of it, that the sheep lost a lot of wool, and my young birds 

 have swallowed it. I have opened forty or fifty young birds, 

 and found the gizzards quite full of wool, and the passage 

 stopped up, so that food could not pass. I send you four 

 pieces of wool, which I have taken from the gizzards of four 

 different birds. I never had a better lot of young birds. They 

 hatched off strong and well, and now I have lost nearly all of 

 them." 



It is probable that the sheep might have been dressed 

 with some arsenical or other poisonous " dip " or " wash," 

 which would remain on the wool and prove fatal to the young 

 birds. The arsenical solution known as " weed-killer " is 



