examination by the Park veterinary surgeon, Dr. W. Reid Blair. They were
found to be infested by great numbers of a dangerous bloodsucking
parasite known as _Strongylus strigosus_, which produces death by anemia
and emaciation. There were hundreds of those parasites in each animal. I
assisted in the examination, and was shown by Dr. Blair, under the
microscope, that _Strongylus_ puts forth eggs literally by hundreds of
thousands!

The life history of that parasite is not well known, but it may easily
develop that the cycle of its maximum destructiveness is seven years,
and therefore it may be accountable for the seven-year plague among the
hares and rabbits of the northern United States and Canada.

Possibly _Strongylus strigosus_ is all that stands between Canada and a
pest of rabbits like that of Australia. Just why this parasite is
inoperative in Australia, or why it has not been introduced there to
lessen the rabbit evil, we do not know. Mr. Seton declares that the
rabbits of his park were "subject to all the ills of the flesh, except
possibly writer's paralysis and housemaid's knee."

PARASITIC INFECTION OF WILD DUCKS.--The diseases of wild game,
especially waterfowl, grouse and quail, have caused heavy losses in
America as well as in European countries, and scientists have been
carefully investigating the cause and the general nature of the
maladies, as well as probable methods of prevention and cure. Mr. Geo.
Atkinson, a well-known practical naturalist of Portage la Prairie,
Manitoba, writes as follows to a local paper on this subject, which I
find quoted in the _National Sportsman_:

The question which has developed these important proportions during