THE CULTIVATOR. 
305 
Messrs. Editors —From all I have seen and heard on 
the subject of what is called the gapes in chickens, it is 
a disease which is not generally understood. I shall 
therefore give you my opinion on its nature and cure. 
This spring, having my chickens attacked as usual with 
the gapes, I dissected one that died and found its Bronchus 
or wind-pipe, (not the throat,) filled with small red worms 
from half to three-quarters of an inch long. This satisfi¬ 
ed me that any particular course of feeding or medicine 
given would not reach the disease. I therefore took a 
quill from a hen’s wing, stripped off’ the feathers within 
an inch and a half of the end, trimmed it off* with a scis¬ 
sors to about half an inch wide, pointing it at the lower 
end. I then tied the ends of the wings to the legs of the 
chicken affected, to prevent its struggling; placed its legs 
between my knees, held its tongue between the thumb 
and fore finger of the left hand, and with the right, in¬ 
serted the trimmed feather in the windpipe (the opening 
of which lies at the root of the tongue,) when the chick¬ 
en opened it to breathe, pushed it down gently as far as it 
would go (which is where the windpipe branches off to the 
lobes of the lungs, below which I have never detected 
the insect,) and twisted it round as I pulled it out, which 
would generally bring up or loosen all the worms, so 
that the chicken would cough them out, if not, I would 
repeat the operation till all were ejected, amounting ge¬ 
nerally to a dozen; then release the chicken, and in the 
course often minutes it would eat heartily, although pre¬ 
vious to the operation it was unable to swallow, and its 
crop would be empty unless filled with some indigestible 
food. In this manner I lost but two out of forty chick¬ 
ens operated on; one by its coughing up a bunch of the 
worms which stuck in the orifice of the windpipe and 
strangled it—the other apparently recovered, but died se¬ 
veral days after in the morning; in the afternoon upon 
examining its windpipe, I found a female worm in it, 
differing from the others by branching off at the tail in a 
number of roots or branches between each of which 
were tubes filled with hundreds of eggs like the spawn 
of a fish; and although the chicken died in the morning, 
the worm was perfectly alive in the afternoon, and con¬ 
tinued so for half an hour in warm water. While I was 
examining it in a concave glass under a microscope, it 
ejected one of its eggs, in the centre of which was an in¬ 
sect in embryo. 
From this fact, I have come to the conclusion that 
when the female worm breeds in the chicken and kills it, 
these hundreds of eggs hatch out in its putrid body in 
some very minute worm which probably after remaining 
in that state during the winter, change in the spring to a 
fly which deposits its eggs on the nostril of the chicken 
from whence they are inhaled and hatched out in the 
windpipe and become the worms I have described. 
There is one fact connected with this disease—that it is 
only old hen-roosts that are subject to it; and I am of 
opinion that where it prevails, if the chicken houses and 
coops were kept clean and frequently whitewashed with 
thin whitewash, with plenty of salt or brine mixed with it, 
and those chickens that take the disease, operated on and 
cured, or if they should die, have them burned up or so 
destroyed that the eggs of the worms would not hatch 
out, that the disease would be eradicated. 
I am also satisfied that the chicken has not the disease 
when first hatched; several broods that I carried and kept 
at a distance from the chicken-house where the disease 
prevailed, were entirely exempt. And chickens hatched 
from my eggs where they had never been troubled with 
this disease, were perfectly free from it; and a neighbor 
of mine who built in the woods half a mile from any 
dwelling, and has raised fowls for six or seven years past, 
and has frequently set my eggs, has never had the gapes 
among his chickens. 
With my first broods of chickens, there was not one es¬ 
caped the gapes. But all that have been hatched since I 
had the chicken-house and coops well whitewashed in¬ 
side and out, with thin whitewash, with plenty of brine in 
it, and kept clean, have been exempt from the disease, 
with occasionally an exception of one or two chickens 
out of a brood. 
In operating on the chickens, although one person can 
effect it, it is much easier done to have one to hold the 
tongue of the chicken while the other passes the feather 
down its windpipe, and by having a small piece of mus¬ 
lin between the fingers, it will prevent the tongue from 
slipping, which it is apt to do upon repeating the opera- , 
tion. 
Accompanying this, I send you drawings of the gape 
worms in their natural sizes, and as they appear when j 
magnified. Nos. 1 are the male worms, and Nos. 2 the 
female; you will observe that the heads of both male and 
female branch off in two trunks with suckers like leeches 
at the extremities of the . trunks, one trunk longer and 
thinner than the other. The intestines extend from the 
branching of the trunks downwards towards the tail, and 
are perfectly apparent when magnified. This female 
branches off like the roots of a tree at the tail with inter¬ 
mediate tubes filled with small oval eggs. 
Yours, &c. C. F. Morton. 
Mill Farm, New Windsor , Orange co., N. Y . Aug., 1844. 
ON THE BLIGHT OF PEAR TREES. 
It appears that they are subject to blight from two cau¬ 
ses—like other trees, if placed in land which at times is 
very wet—in a dry time such trees will suffer from want 
of moisture at the roots, and like forest trees in similar 
cases, will die off—they should be placed on rolling land 
where the water can run off freely. But the most com¬ 
mon cause of blight in pear trees is a worm, the egg of 
which is deposited in the branches by a small insect. If 
iron ore or cinders of iron, or any other articles of iron 
be placed around the roots of the tree, the insect will bid 
adieu to the tree. Having tried this remedy in a sandy 
soil, and also on a stiff soil, and in places far distant from 
each other, anti having driven off the insect when the 
trees of others were very much injured or destroyed in 
my neighborhood, I feel as if all who are troubled by 
these insects should carefully try the use of iron articles 
rather than to be under the necessity of continually top¬ 
ping off the limbs which contain the worm or young in¬ 
sect. It is probable that the iron is unfavorable to the 
worm which drops from the branches and makes its win¬ 
tering place at the root of the tree, and then the insect 
avoids an unfavorable location for its young. But what¬ 
ever may be the theory, it is sufficient that iron has the 
desired effect. C. D. 
