CONSERVATION OF GAME BIRDS. 567 



The game farm is here to stay and in time will show benefi- 

 cent results, but it cannot be depended upon alone to increase 

 our game. Restrictive game laws will be doubly necessary to 

 conserve the wild game wherever free shooting is allowed. 



There is one serious objection to the introduction of foreign 

 game birds, and that is the danger of introducing disease 

 which may be extremely fatal to our native game birds. 

 About the time that the European House Sparrow {Passer 

 domesticus) was introduced into Rhode Island, an enteric 

 disease called the blackhead appeared among Rhode Island 

 Turkeys. No satisfactory preventive or cure for the disease 

 has been found, and it almost has destroyed the Turkey indus- 

 try in New England. Investigations made under Dr. Philip 

 B. Hadley of the Rhode Island experiment station proved that 

 over sixty per cent, of the English Sparrows about the station 

 carried the germ of this disease. It was found also in chicks, 

 -Pigeons and some other birds, and now is distributed generally 

 among poultry. The disease is ascribed by some authorities 

 to a coccidium and by others to an amoeba, both of which 

 are present in diseased birds. The disease is identical with 

 a white diarrhoea of chicks, and is now quite generally dis- 

 tributed in the United States. It is extremely deadly to 

 Ruffed Grouse and Bob-whites in confinement, and is carried 

 by Pheasants as well as poultry. What effect this and certain 

 bacterial diseases have had or will have on the native Grouse 

 and Quail, in field and cover, can only be conjectured. Out- 

 breaks of a "Grouse disease" are well known in England and 

 Scotland. A very fatal Quail disease has appeared in the 

 southern States. It seems probable, however, now that so 

 many Pheasants and Partridges have been imported into this 

 country, that the harm has been done, that their diseases are 

 all here and that further importations can do no more than to 

 add to their dissemination. 



Another objection to foreign birds, which often is brought 

 up, is that if they become too numerous they will drive out 

 the native birds; that the European Partridge and the Pheas- 

 ant will take the food that otherwise would support the Bob- 

 white in winter; and that the Pheasants, where numerous, 



