192 DISEASE IN WILD MAMMALS AND BIRDS 
showed streptothrix-like masses while in another case 
bacterial colonies and yeast-like bodies were found in 
adjacent lymph nodes. The genesis of tliis condition 
might lie in injury by fish fins or by foreign bodies, of 
which large numbers are found at times (a pint and a half 
of stones, marbles, and sticks were found in one stomach). 
Gastritis has been the starting point of septicemia on two 
occasions, and three times an acute exacerbation or new 
implantation of infection occurred, ^\4th extension into 
the intestine. It is interesting that all the deaths of 
Pinnipedia with gastroenteric conditions occurred in the 
winter months. 
Insectiyora are represented by two common Euro- 
pean Hedgehogs. In one there were three shallow 
but shelving ulcers in the stomach which had bled suffi- 
ciently to weaken the animal ; free blood was found in the 
intestine. The other specimen was diagnosed at post- 
mortem as having catarrhal enteritis involving nearly 
the whole small gut, but histological section did not con- 
firm this. 
As one descends the zoological scale the first gastro- 
intestinal tract prepared for the nutritional care of bulky 
food is to be found in the Rodentia. This order pre- 
sents a great variety of shapes and arrangements of the 
stomach, but the outstanding feature, with very few 
exceptions (cf. spermophiles), is the development of the 
cardiac and fundal divisions ostensibly for the reception 
of a large bulk of coarse food to be digested at leisure. 
Some genera like the hamster (Cricetus) have a stomach 
closely resembling the ruminants, while that of the 
spermophile suggests the equine stomach. The pyloric 
end, variable in many ways, greatly resembles the 
abomasum. So too the duodenum is large, loose and dis- 
tensible while the copious small gut ends in a very large 
cecum, shaped at times in a manner which has led to the 
term ''colonic stomach." The colon is variable and not 
always supplied with longitudinal bands and sacculations. 
