608 DISEASE IN WILD MAMMALS AND BIRDS 
connective tissue. Markings indistinct. Oviduct is negative except over 
a distance of an inch near the doacal opening. Here there is a com- 
pound curve with constriction to almost obliteration of lumen. This 
does not seem to be connected with the colonic trouble. The stomach is 
negative containing only a few small pebbles. Beginning at the pylorus 
and extending through the whole of the small gut is a recent, moderately 
severe catarrhal enteritis with so much exudate as to form almost a cast 
of the tube. Colon and cloaca show an infiltration of submucosa with 
areas of hemorrhage. ^lucosa swollen as if by edema, glistening and 
covered by bloody mucus. Ceca negative except that they seem to have 
been closed as their contents are scanty and fii-m. Histological section 
of cloaca shows it to be the seat of a chronic inflammation which has 
constricted and distorted the tubules into simple masses of nuclei. 
Iklarked polynuclear and round cell infiltration of mucosa and submucosa. 
This is apparently due to ameba-like bodies — a large vacuole with a 
delicate limiting membrane and a piece of diffuse chromatin in the 
centre — a few of which may be found deep in the mucosa. Liver shows 
marked passive congestion, here and there areas of necrosis Avith some 
fatty infiltration. Small groups of ameba-like bodies can be found 
apparently lying in sinusoids of liver and in neighborhood of necroses. 
Quail disease, since the careful work of Morse in 1907, 
has been thought by most observers to be due to an organ- 
ism of the colon group, but I am informed recently by the 
Pennsylvania State Board of Animal Industry that 
coccidia have been found often enough in the droppings 
and in the morbid lesions to warrant a suspicion of their 
etiological importance. Although they were not espe- 
cially sought in the work about to be reported, their pres- 
ence probably would not have escaped detection during 
that investigation. I have recently had occasion to 
examine three birds with lesions identical with those 
accepted as characteristic of quail disease, one of which 
was subjected to the proverbial ''fine tooth comb" 
methods; no coccidia were found in the liver or intesti- 
nal lesions. 
The idea that quail disease, with its ulcerative typh- 
litis and necrotizing hepatitis, is identical with blackhead 
or at least that if the latter be due to protozoa, the former 
is also, requires no special stretch of imagination to one 
familiar with the morbid lesions. A decision is the more 
difl&cult because of one's inability to reproduce quail 
