On 
898 General Notes. [October, 
# 
Gares 1n Fowrs.—The fact that the disease known as gapes in 
poultry is produced by a parasitic worm (Syxgamus trachealis) 
which infests the trachea of the birds was settled long ago, and 
for most of our recent knowledge of the worm and the disease 
we are indebted to the prize essay of Pierte Megnin. According 
to this author the mature worms and their eggs are coughed out 
of the throat of the infested fowl and the disease is spread by its 
associates picking them up along with their food or by drinking 
water in which the eggs may have hatched into larvae. No sug- 
gestion is allowed of any intermediate host. Mr. H. D. Walker, 
in an apparently carefully prepared paper on this subject (Bulle- 
tin Buffalo Society Nat. Sciences, v, pp. 49-71, 1886) details 
many experiments which he has tried, and several of them point 
very strongly to the conclusion that the earth-worm may, in 
many cases, play a part in the distribution of the pest. The em- 
bryos have been found living in the earth-worm at all seasons of 
the year, and earth-worms from infested localities, when fed to 
chickens, almost invariably produce the disease. Dr. Walker has 
also produced the disease in robins, and claims to have found the 
embryo of the lung-worm of calves (Strongylus micrurus) in the 
_ earth-worm. 
