Our Vanishing Wild Life - Its Extermination and Preservation by William Temple Hornaday
page 150 of 733 (20%)
page 150 of 733 (20%)
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Throughout British East Africa the supply of big game in 1905 was very
great, but since that time it has been very greatly diminished by shooting. CARIBOU DISEASE.--From time to time reports have come from the Province of Quebec, and I think from Maine and New Brunswick also, of many caribou having died of disease. The nature of that disease has remained a mystery, because it seems that no pathologist ever has had an opportunity to investigate it. Fortunately, however, the alleged disease never has been sufficiently wide-spread or continuous to make appreciable inroads on the total number of caribou, and apparently the trouble has been local. SCAB IN MOUNTAIN SHEEP.--"Scab" is a contagious and persistent skin disease that affects sheep, and is destructive when not controlled. Fifteen years ago it prevailed in some portions of the west. In Colorado it has several times been reported that many bighorn mountain sheep were killed by "scab," which was contracted on wild mountain pastures that had been gone over by domestic sheep carrying that disease. From the reports current at that time, we inferred that about 200 mountain sheep had been affected. It was feared that the disease would spread through the wild flocks and become general, but this did not occur. It seems that the remnant flocks had become so isolated from one another that the isolation of the affected flocks saved the others. LUMPY-JAW IN ANTELOPE AND SHEEP.--It is a lamentable fact that some, at least, of the United States herds of prong-horned antelope are afflicted with a very deadly chronic infective disease known as actinomycosis, or lumpy-jaw. It has been brought into the Zoological Park five times, by specimens shipped from Colorado, Texas, Wyoming and Montana. I think our |
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