386 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



influence of choleraic discharges, decomposing animal and 



vegetable matters, impure water, and low, damp situations 



It affects, more or less, all kinds of birds .... Neither age nor 

 sex have any influence, apparently, in its production,. frequency, 



or severity It is rapid in its invasion and course, and its 



duration may vary from a few hours to two or three days." The 

 chief symptoms are listlessness, cramp, loss of appetite, excessive 

 diarrhoea, laboured breathing, ruffled plumage, disinclination to 

 move, and convulsions, which become more marked until death 

 supervenes. As regards treatment, nothing effectual is known. 

 Diarrhoea is present throughout. 



In 'Poultry* (1883, pp. 70 and 84), appears a translation of 

 some remarks on fowl-cholera contributed to * Le Poussin' by 

 Mons. Jouin, who says : — 



"When once it breaks out, the disease causes the most terrible ravages 

 in the shortest time — often in spite of the separation, as far as practicable, 

 of the healthy and ailing birds. It exactly resembles an infectious fever in 

 the way it comes out and develops. It is in the highest degree virulent, 

 for it is only necessary to take the smallest drop of blood from a diseased 

 chicken and to insert it into the body of a healthy one, and in a few hours 

 death will supervene, accompanied by all the symptoms just described. In 

 spite, too, of its appellation, the complaint is not entirely confined to 

 Gallinaceous birds ; inoculation will produce it in the rabbit, the dog, and 

 even the horse, according to the experience of MM. Renault and Raynal. 

 .... There are some animals which cannot be affected with it by inocula- 

 tion. If, for example, a pig be inoculated, the animal's health will not in 

 any way be affected thereby." 



This, then, is the kind of disease which it was proposed to 

 spread broadcast over the thriving "island continent" — a loath- 

 some and pestilential epidemic, which when it breaks out " causes 

 the most terrible ravages in the shortest time"; which "affects 

 more or less all kinds of birds and various mammals"; which 

 varies in its duration in individual cases " from a few hours to 

 two or three days"; and for the treatment of which "no effectual 

 curative measures are known." One may well pause before 

 disseminating wholesale over a vast country such a frightful and 

 uncontrollable complaint. It is little wonder that the Australians 

 hesitated before allowing M. Pasteur's representative to test the 

 proposed remedy. 



With rabbit-cholera, however, the case is entirely different. 

 Its existence in Canada has been known for many years, but no 





