VERMINOUS DISEASE AMONG FOWLS. 
649 
and this increases until there is a constant gaping for breath in the 
chickens. For the most part, those that are fat and in high con¬ 
dition are the first attacked; but they are soon cut off, or rapidly 
dwindle away. On opening them, it is evident that they have 
been destroyed by worms collected in the windpipe, of a peculiar 
sort, and each, on careless examination, appearing to have two tails, 
the neck and head being so small and long, as scarcely, without 
the aid of a lens, to be distinguished from the other extremity. 
They stick like leeches to the side of the windpipe, and when 
they get to a certain size they suffocate the chickens by congre¬ 
gating into a mass. 
This disease usually commences from the third to the fifth week 
of their age. 
I have lost hundreds since I commenced my keeping of poultry. 
In this year, out of one of my lots of nineteen, six only have been 
saved. When the feathers come upon the head and neck, they 
seem able to contend with the complaint. I have opened every 
one that died, and found precisely the same complaint in all, the 
number of worms varying from five to fourteen. 
For eight years I have tried all manner of means, and different 
kinds of food, and every pretended remedy that I could hear of, 
but with variable and far from satisfactory success. I have done 
best with pills of sulphur, turpentine, and wheat flour; but these 
would only succeed when administered on the first appearance or 
first week of the disorder, and, even then, no satisfactory reliance 
could be placed on them. 
I think that this subject demands the attention not only of the 
breeder of poultr}^ but of the sportsman and scientific man; for I 
am confident that it is the disease of which so many pheasants and 
partridges die annually. 
I am, &c. 
DESCRIPTION OF A VERMINOUS DISEASE AMONG 
FOWLS. 
By M. BlavettL, M. V., Bayeux. 
No arrangement of the maladies of our domestic fowls has 
hitherto found a place in the nosography of veterinary medicine; 
and yet it is a subject of very considerable interest. Our poultry 
are not only, like our ([uadrupeds, exposed to many epizootic dis¬ 
eases, more or less destructive, but they have maladies peculiar 
to themselves, which occasion great mortality among them, and, 
VOL. XIII. 4 R 
