94 The Natural History of British Game Birds 
Pheasants, for if chickens die and the ground once becomes a harbour for the bacillus 
of enteritis, it may take years before it recovers. I have recently been shooting in the 
Midlands, where the stock of partridges has been reduced by one-half, whole coveys being 
found dead in August, owing to this cause. "Scurfy legs" is another disease common 
amongst Pheasants and fowls. It is due to a parasite {Sarcoptes mutans), which spreads 
quickly unless checked at once. Pheasants have also been known to die from lead- 
poisoning, due to swallowing shot picked up in the coverts, but such cases are rare, as 
well as poisoning by the eating of yew leaves. 1 
It has been discovered recently that numbers of Pheasants die from a form of 
epidemic pneumonia. On examining a bird which had died of this disease, Dr. Sambon 
discovered a protozoal organism closely resembling the Leucocytozoon lovati. This new 
protozoa was described by Dr. Sambon as Leucocytozoon macleani (see Field, Septem- 
ber 28, 1907). The birds attacked seem to die in a few hours ; one game-rearer having 
lost 1500 in a very short time. Dr. Louis Sambon and Mr. H. Hammond Smith 
thus describe the disease in the Field (July 4, 1908): — 
"The disease seems to make its appearance, not only on ground which has been used 
before for rearing pheasants, but also on ground which has never before been used for that 
purpose. Both in the pheasants and in the partridges the pathological appearances were the 
same. The trachea contained a quantity of blood-stained serous fluid. The lungs, either in 
whole or in part, presented the typical characters of pneumonia ; in some cases both lungs were 
involved, in others only one. The liver in some cases showed fatty degeneration, and was of 
a yellow-ochre colour. In these cases there were symptoms of diarrhoea. Bacteriological 
examination showed in all cases an organism exactly similar in morphological and cultural char- 
acters to the diplococcus or pneumococcus of Fraenkel, a bacterium now regarded as the most 
frequent, if not the sole, cause of genuine acute lobar pneumonia in man. 
"In the pheasant the diplococcus was found in large numbers, both in the serous fluid from 
the bronchi and in the consolidated lungs. It is a small, roundish, oval, or flame-shaped 
coccus about ia» in longest diameter, but varying somewhat in size. It occurs as a rule in 
pairs (diplococcus), with broader ends in apposition, and the paired elements may be either 
equal in size or one larger than the other. A wide, halo-like zone, the so-called capsule, 
surrounds each organism or pair. This capsule has a sharply defined external margin, is round 
when enclosing a single coccus, and ellipsoidal when containing a pair of cocci. Occasionally 
the two elements of a pair are situated at the opposite poles of the capsule, a space inter- 
vening between them. In the pulmonary exudate empty capsules are frequently met with. The 
organism stains readily with the basic aniline dyes, and retains the stain in Gram's method. 
Its cultural characters appear to be identical with those of Fraenkel's diplococcus. 
"In a few cases the diplococcus was the only organism seen in film preparations made 
from pneumonic lung, but in the majority of cases, and especially in birds that had been dead 
some time, it was found together with putrefactive and other secondary bacteria. Amongst the 
latter the most frequent was a capsulated bacillus in every way similar to Friedlander's pneumo- 
bacillus, an organism also regarded by some bacteriologists as a possible cause of lobar pneumonia. 
The capsulated bacillus found in the pheasant measures from 1 . 5^ to 3^ and even 4/u in length 
by about 1^ in breadth ; it has blunt, rounded ends, and occurs frequently in pairs, occasion- 
ally in long rod forms, always surrounded by a wide hyaline zone of mucus-like substance. It 
stains readily with the basic aniline stains, but loses the stain in Gram's method. Its cultural 
1 At Abbotsbury, Dorsetshire, in 1894, Lord Ilchester had a clipped yew hedge in his garden cut down because 
Pheasants died from eating the leaves as they sat on the top of it. Several other cases of yew poisoning in Pheasants have 
been reported from time to time. See the Fitld, Nov. 25, 1876; Dec. 2 and 23, 1876; Dec. 20, 1890; Sept. 17, 1892; 
Nov. II, 1893. 
