694 SYNOPSIS OF CONTINENTAL VETERINARY JOURNALS, 
walls, the orbits, and under the skin. These tubercles have 
exactly the same structure as the false membranes. I have 
consequently, in my memoire on the subject, termed the 
disease Tuberculo-diphtheria. This disease affects alike all 
species of birds. During the two years 1876 and '77 I have 
found it— 
19 
times 
in pigeons (both native and foreign), 
fowls. 
17 
}) 
5 
j) 
Californian oolins. 
7 
33 
red and green partridges. 
2 
33 
turkeys and speckled hens. 
5 
33 
common pheasants. 
18 
33 
rarer forms of pheasants (silver, &c.)< 
2 
33 
tragopans. 
15 
3* 
native and foreign sparrows. 
4 
33 
parrots. 
7 
33 
geese (common), or rare (as Carolinas, Mandarins, &c.). 
It is very contagious among birds; also when a poultry- 
yard, cage, pigeon-house, or other aviary is invaded, all the 
inhabitants, with rare exceptions, are one after another 
affected, and those only recover in which it remains localised 
in the tongue (being the true “ pip”), in the pharynx, or in 
the subcutaneous areolar tissue. Removal of the false mem¬ 
branes, followed by cauterisation with nitrate of silver, or by 
honey acidified with hydrochloric acid, in the first case, or 
incision through the skin and removal of the -tumour, in the 
last case, suffices to bring about a cure. The pathological 
anatomy of this affection has been carefully worked out both 
in Italy and in France, and always the determining cause 
has been found to be a simple living organism, which is met 
with under the false membranes or at the surface of the 
tubercles in the outer layers of the tissues to which the 
exudate adheres. This organism, which MM. Arloing and 
Tripier (who have only studied the tuberculous form affect¬ 
ing the liver of fowls) have recognised as a gregarina , on the 
conclusions of M. Balbiani , to whom these observers sub¬ 
mitted it, has been classed among Psorospermice by Dr. 
Pietra Piana, who gives very exact figures of it in the plate 
which accompanies his memoir. It occurs under two forms : 
as sporule-like corpuscles grouped in a loose heap, or en¬ 
closed in a spherical sac (psorosperms); or as egg-shaped 
corpuscles with a resisting envelope, which open at their 
extremity, and contain a granular matter, which undergo 
segmentation, and produce sporule-like sacs of the first form. 
The same proto-organisms are met with in tubercles of the 
liver of the rabbit—a disease exactly corresponding to tuber- 
culo-diphtheria of birds when it is localised in the liver, and 
