The Illustrated Book of Poultry. 
196 
newly-hatched worm to the nostrils of the chicken. At all events, since Mr. Halsted’s method of 
pievention was published in former editions of this work, there has been an overwhelming amount 
of English evidence in its favour ; and particularly in 1880 and 1881, when there was an epidemic, 
one well-known breeder after another wrote to the Live Stock Journal to report that Mr. Halsted’s 
measures had banished gapes from yards previously infested. On the other hand, some have 
utterly failed with it. 
Since that date, microscopists have found the eggs of the gape-worm in the body of the 
common earth-worm, which therefore also acts as a host or bearer. Thus in three ways- — through 
drinking water, through lice or ticks, and by eating worms — it is probable the cycle of transmission 
is completed. The lesson from all alike is the absolute destruction of all worms, and bodies 
containing them, and the most thorough disinfection and cleanliness, after a yard has been 
contaminated. 
When the disease has actually entered a yard, there are various remedies more or less effectual. 
To add camphor, or even lime, to the drinking-water, has some effect, and may be enough in mild 
cases, or with a few chickens. The old-fashioned cure was to strip a small quill-feather, all but a 
small tuft at the point, and (moistening it in turpentine or not) to introduce it into the trachea, 
turn it round, and withdraw it with the worms. This is effectual, but requires much care to prevent 
lacerating the windpipe, or causing suffocation. In this way thirty worms have been successfully 
extracted from one chicken. A very much better method is that adopted by an anonymous 
Irish correspondent, who takes two straight hairs from a horse’s tail laid together, ties a knot 
on the end of the pair, and cuts off the ends close to the knot. This is passed straight ( i.e ., 
without twisting) down the windpipe as far as it will go without bending, then twisted between 
the finger and thumb and drawn out. A trial or two may miss, but usually five or six attempts 
will bring up four or five worms, and the hairs inserted in this way, without twisting, do not seem 
to hurt the chicks, and are used with the greatest facility. The bringing up of four to six worms, 
and the failure of more to come after a blank trial or two, may usually be reckoned as a cure. 
Another method of individual treatment is to get some carbolic acid (which must be of 
the clear or white quality), and placing some in an iron spoon or saucer, hold it over a candle 
or lamp. Dense white fumes will arise, in which the chicken’s head is to be immersed till 
nearly suffocated ; or if a number have to be treated, the whole may be confined in a box and 
fumigated at once, being, however, carefully watched through a hole in the box covered by a piece 
of glass. For while this treatment is absolutely unfailing, it is rather a ticklish operation, since 
the worms have to be killed without quite killing the chickens, which is very easily done beside. 
There are other methods of cure more generally applicable, as in an outbreak amongst 
pheasants, which could never be treated in the above manner. MM. Montagu and Megnin have 
proved repeatedly that to substitute an infusion of garlic for water, and add fine-chopped garlic in 
the food, will check the complaint and kill the worms. M. Megnin has also tried, with marked 
success, dissolving in the water (to kill all worms which may find their way there) one part in 100 
of salicylate of soda, and dosing each pheasant with qb grains of yellow gentian and q\ grains of 
assafoetida — large fowls will need more. Only vermifuges which — like these — have a strong odour 
can be expected to kill parasites which inhabit the air-passages rather than the digestive canal ; 
but there is good evidence of the success of this treatment in pheasant preserves which had been 
all but exterminated by gapes. It is a curious coincidence, and confirms the soundness of it, that 
an English “patent” taken out by Mr. J. IT. Clark, a gamekeeper, is very similar. He takes and 
intimately compounds the following: — Powdered quicklime, 1 lb.; powdered sulphur, \ lb. ; tincture 
of assafoetida, 1 oz. ; arsenious acid (white arsenic), 1 drachm; oil of thyme, or oil of cummin, 1 oz. 
