ecies. Nothing was known
of the method of infection or the transference from host to host or
species to species, and both departments asked for specimens for
examination.

Authorities are a unit in opinion that the question is one of great
importance to game conservation, and although opinions of the
dangers from eating differ somewhat, a record is given of a hog fed
upon affected flesh developing parasites in the muscles in six
weeks' time, while a case of a man's death from dropsy was found to
be the result of development of these parasites in the valves of the
heart.

The ability of these low forms of life to withstand extremes of heat
makes it necessary for more than ordinary cooking to be assured of
killing them, and since their presence is unnoted in the ordinary
course of dressing the birds for the table, there is little doubt
that very considerable numbers of these parasites are consumed at
our tables every season, with results at present unknown to us.

The species I have found most particularly infected have been
mallards, shovellers, teal, gadwall and pintails, and the birds,
outwardly in the best condition, have frequently been found loaded
with sacs of these parasites and only the turning back of the breast
skin can disclose their presence.

The greatest slaughter of wild ducks by disease occurred on Great Salt
Lake, Utah. Until the "duck disease" (intestinal coccidiosis) broke out
there, in the summer of 1910, the annual market slaughter of ducks at
the mouth of Bear River had been enormous. When at Salt Lake City in
1888 I made an effort to arouse the sportsmen whom I met to the
necessity of a reform, but my exhortations fell on deaf ears. Naturally,
the sweeping away of the remaining ducks by disease would suggest a
heaven-sent judgment upon the slaughterers were it not for the fact that
the last state of the unfortunate ducks is if anything worse than the
first.

On Oct. 17, 1911, the annual report of the chief of the Biological
Survey contained the following information on this subject:

_Epidemic Among Wild Ducks on Great Salt Lake_.--Following a long
dry season, which favored the rearing of a large number of wild
ducks, but materially reduced the area of the feeding ponds,
resulting in great overcrowding, a severe epidemic broke out about
August 1, 1910, among the wild ducks about Great Salt Lake, Utah.
Dead ducks could be counted by thous