458 DISEASE IN WILD MAMMALS AND BIRDS 
shark. Some fish are poisonous at certain periods as 
spawTiing season, the poison then being confined to the roe. 
Still others are harmless miless rendered toxic by some 
injurious food. This poisoning of muscle meats is seen 
in quail and partridges fed on mountain laurel, in some 
fish after consuming certain marine plants, and in cattle 
poisoned by amanita. 
The most common sources of poisoning are spoiled 
meat and flesh of diseased animals, both of which are 
serious factors in the production of the gastrointestinal 
disorders of omnivores and carnivores. Practically all 
the reports of meat poisoning from the literature have 
been traced to the use of raw or insufficiently cooked 
flesh, and have yielded on bacteriologic examination Bad. 
paratyphosus, Bad. enteritidis, Bad. suipestifer, Bad. 
coll, or Bad. proieus. 
The bacteria may produce toxin in the food previous 
to ingestion causing in the host only a severe intoxication. 
This is the situation developed after eating sturgeon 
infected with Bad. piscidus agilis, an organism which 
manufactures a highly poisonous alkaloid. A similar 
intoxication follows the ingestion of potatoes infected 
^\dth Bad. proteus or containing the poisonous alkaloid, 
solanin, which is produced in diseased and sprouting 
potatoes. Other examples of this are (1) ergotism — due 
to an infection of rye and wild grasses with Claviceps 
purpurea which produces three poisonous bodies, ergo- 
tinic acid, which is not poisonous when taken into the 
stomach, sphacetinic acid and cornutin which act on the 
nervous system, brain, cord, vagus and vasomotor centre 
giving rise to toxic polyneuritis, and (2) favus, an acute 
febrile anemia with jaundice and hemoglobinuria prob- 
ably due to a bacterial infection or fungus growth of the 
bean. Infected food may also produce soluble heat- 
resisting toxins that produce immediate symptoms and 
increase the animal's susceptibility to infection. This is 
the more common finding in cases of poisoning with milk 
