338 THE ZOOLOGIST. 



may be repulsed, but when the flanks are turned at the same 

 time a disaster is inevitable. Some sixty years ago the Sousliks 

 (Spermophilas sp.) suddenly disappeared in the neighbourhood 

 of Sarepta, in south-eastern Russia, in consequence of some 

 epidemics ; and for years no Sousliks were seen in that neigh- 

 bourhood. It took many years before they became as numerous 

 as they formerly were.* Mr. Guthrie, who noticed the occurrence 

 of the larvae of a blue-bottle (Calliphora) in the nostrils of Toads, 

 writes that it is probable that the number of Toads is largely 

 kept under by those means. In 1872 Toads were remarkably 

 plentiful in the neighbourhood of Tenby, South Wales, and he 

 noticed that the disease was very prevalent among them. In 

 the following year scarcely any could be found, and he saw none 

 diseased.! That epidemics do occur among wild birds is well 

 known, and Dr. Stejneger records an instance with the Pelagic 

 Cormorant (Phalacrocorax pelagicus) of the Commander Islands. 

 "Thousands upon thousands" of these birds died during the 

 winter of 1876-77, so that masses of dead birds covered the 

 beach all round the islands.! Brehin, when travelling among 

 the Ostiaks in Siberia, witnessed the devastating effect of splenic 

 fever or anthrax among Eeindeer. In the immediate neighbour- 

 hood of one tshum — the hut of the Ostiak — he counted seventy- 

 six dead Eeindeer. "Wherever the eye turned it lighted on 

 carcases, or on beasts both young and old, lying at their last 

 gasp. . . . The unfortunate herd, which had started from the 

 Ural two thousand strong, and had now dwindled to a couple of 

 hundred, whose path was marked by a line of carcases, was 

 collected afresh around the tshum, but next morning there were 

 again forty corpses around the resting-place." § The epidemic 

 among the mammals of South Africa a few years ago is still in 

 our recollection. In the same country, Gordon Cumming, writing- 

 half a century ago, describes the Goat as being in many districts 

 " subject to a disease called by the Boers ' brunt-sickta,' or 

 burnt-sickness, owing to the animals inflicted with it exhibiting 

 the appearance of having been burnt. It is incurable ; and if 



* Becker, ' Bull. Soc. Moscou,' 1889, p. 625. 



f Cf. Pocock, ' Boy. Nat. Hist.' vol. vi. p. 68. 



| Cf. Lucas, ' Bept. Nat. Mus.' Washington, 1891, p. 637. 



§ ' From North Pole to Equator,' pp. 412-13. 



