COPY 
Grdat Palls* Montana, 
September 10, 1915, 
.Hear Sir: 
I wish to bring to your notice a condition which is this fall 
existing around Lake Bowdoin, a body of water in the eastern part of 
the Milk River valley, this State* Hundreds, perhaps thousands of 
waterfowl are dead and dying of what appears to be avian-cholera® 
Post-mortems made by Mr. Carl Starg of the State Agricultural College 
lead him to this conclusion, as the bacilli isolated by him strongly 
resemble those of the above disease. 
Lake Bowdoin is a very large and irregularly shaped body of 
water, v/ith shores and islands rush-grown and swampy, There are no 
large spaces of open water , but the absolute shore-line might be 
thirty miles in length. It has been a wondrous breeding ground? and 
of course a great shooting resort during the autumn flight. 
Though it is now surrounded by agricultural communities, it is 
rendered sufficiently sequestered by its size and shape to form a 
nesting site for both cranes and pelicans, who successfully reared their 
young on some of the islands this year® I do not gather from the 
reports that any birds other than ducks and coot have been affected « 
You will form conclusions as to the possible cause of the disease, etc., 
much more valuable than any I can Advance but I may say that when a small 
boy nearly fifty years ago a similar condition existed as I recall in 
