THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
have been subsequently fully confirmed by Dr Cobbett and Dr Graham 
Smith, who arrived at a very definite conclusion as to the absence of 
pneumonia in the birds which they examined. 
It is nearly twenty years since Dr Klein made his investigation on 
“ grouse disease,” and the study of bacteriology was then, comparatively 
speaking, in its infancy. The significance of the fact that certain bacteria 
normally invade the tissues at the time of, or after, death, was not duly 
recognized. 
It is quite clear that one of the most important signs of disease, whether 
it be Strongylosis or Coccidiosis^ is a loss of weight, and this loss of condition, 
even to emaciation, which follows on Strongylosis, is a character to which 
full prominence is given by all writers about “ grouse disease,” though 
no measurement of actual weights had ever been recorded, so far as was 
known, before the recent Inquiry was undertaken. 
The careful examination of some thousands of grouse, both healthy 
and diseased, has added very largely to the number of species of parasites, 
both external and internal, which inhabit them. A few years ago only two 
internal parasites were known in the grouse, but we now know that what 
Dr Shipley calls a “ considerable fauna ” lives both in and on them. There 
are eight species of insect or mite living among the feathers or on the skin, 
and the alimentary canal, lungs and other organs are peopled by no less 
than fifteen different species of parasites. Some of these are negligible, 
but two at least are associated with the grave disorders which often ter- 
minate in death. The insects and mites which live on the skin are interest- 
ing because they possibly form a second host of the tape -worms which 
are injurious to the lining of the alimentary canal. There are two species 
of bird -lice, very numerous on diseased birds; two species of flea, 
occasionally met with, which may possibly serve as a second and larval 
host of the most dangerous tape -worm; ticks occasionally found; a 
common cheese or flower-mite, sometimes present in great numbers 
on the skin of grouse ; and, lastly, two species of fly, one of which is 
the well-known grouse-fly. All these creatures have been carefully 
examined, but the investigation up to the present has failed to reveal 
the larva of the grouse tape -worm. Of the fifteen internal parasites only 
four or five demand attention. When the Committee commenced work, 
the large tape-worm (Davainea urogalli), which lives in the small intestine 
all the year round, and the slender thread -worm (Trichostrongylus per- 
gracilis), which inhabits the paired caeca or blind -guts, were the only 
60 
