612 DISEASE IN WILD MAMMALS AND BIRDS 
of the villi are either swollen with a cellular infiltrate or 
by an area of granular necrosis, or have disappeared. It 
would seem that the surface of the mucosa rapidly degen- 
erates and desquamates. Bacteria are very numerous. 
The adjacent pancreas is negative. The ileum showed 
round cell infiltration of the deep mucosa, swelling of the 
\dlli and a desquamation of the surface. One ulcer was 
found having its base on the swollen muscularis and 
being covered with necrotic slough. Adjacent peritoneum 
is slightly infiltrated, but chiefly congested and edema- 
tous. This ileum lesion seems to be the characteristic one 
of the disease. Bacteriological observations were made 
upon cultures obtained from the intestinal mural lesions, 
the peritoneal exudate, the liver necroses, and the heart's 
blood in eleven cases. In seven cases I was able to isolate 
a motile rod like the B. coli communis and in four cases 
a non-motile rod of the Bad. aerogenes type. The 
former is quite similar to the B. scoticus (Migula) 
reported in Grouse disease. 
'*We obtained from Doctor Kalbfus of the Pennsyl- 
vania State Game Commission, four perfectly healthy 
birds for experimentation. A culture of the isolated germ 
was injected into two of them and mixed with the food of 
the remaining two. It does not seem profitable to cite the 
details of the work as the results were entirely negative, 
no lesions resulting that bore the slightest resemblance to 
the spontaneous disease. The birds either lived indefi- 
nitely or succumbed to wholly foreign conditions. This 
negative experiment is of course no proof that the organ- 
ism is not the cause of quail disease, for the methods 
employed might not be the correct ones to propagate the 
\^rus or the germ may have lost its virulence during the 
laboratory culture work. However, as some observers 
have not reported this bacillus in the disease this germ 
loses something in importance by the negative inocula- 
tion experiment. 
