FOREST, FISH AXD GAME COMMISSIONER. 227 



alwavs present in the warmest part of summer, but never in winter; it 

 occurs frequently in Italian fresh waters and in brackish water, but is 

 more uncommon in the salt water. 



The cause of this epidemic was first discovered by Canestrini in 1892. 

 Canestrini found, especially in the liver of the diseased eel, a bacillus which 

 he recognized as the cause and designated by the name Bacillus anguillarum. 



The Bacillus anguillarum, according to Canestrini, is harmless to 

 warm-blooded animals; for certain fishes (eels, sticklebacks, gold fish) 

 and amphibians (frogs, salamanders) it is pathogenic and most deadly, 

 above all for the eel, in which Canestrini, by injections of clear cultures 

 in the stomach cavity could produce the most characteristic symptoms, 

 that is, hemorrhagic skin spots, redness of the pectoral and anal fins, some- 

 times even sores on the skin of the belly, more rarely on the sides and back. 

 The last appearance of eels affected by the Red Plague in the Baltic, which 

 I was unable to observe, Canestrini describes likewise as characteristic 

 of the infected eels in Commachio. 



In opposition to Canestrini, however, the latest observer of the Red 

 Plague. Inghilleri, insists that the bacillus of the Red Plague of the eels 

 studied by him and discovered by Prof. Gosio in Orbetello has shown itself 

 to be very pathogenic to warm-blooded animals as for example sea dolphins, 

 rabbits and white rats, and it also has shown a difference from the bacillus 

 of Canestrini, according to the researches of the present author. 



Under these circumstances, in fact, it appears not yet settled whether 

 both authors have had in mind one and the same bacillus. It is all the 

 more doubtful as Sennebogen states that red spots appear on the skin of 

 the eel during the heated term of the year, when the eel suffers and chokes 

 in the ponds from lack of air, which causes it to attempt to escape from 

 the inclosures and thereby injures the skin so seriously as to produce hem- 

 orrhages therein. Confusion with the genuine Red Plague may very well 

 happen in such cases, and is all the more possible because where the eels 

 are gradually dying from want of oxygen, and almost during their final 

 agony, bacteria enter, for example, into the bodies from the intestines. 



Although up to the present no bacteriological examination of eels 

 affected by the Red Plague in the Baltic has been made and the Bacillus 

 anguillarum of Canestrini is not positively determined, the identity of the 



