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BIRDS AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES.—

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Pacific Seventh-day Adventist Publishing Association · Oakland, California · Oct 11, 1877

FromSigns of the Times, Vol. 3, No. 39.

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BIRDS AND INFECTIOUS DISEASES.—

Can birds scent the cholera and yellow fever infection in the air? Certain well authenticated facts render it not improbable that they can. Recent European journals state that at Munich, where several cases of cholera have occurred, the rooks and crows, which before flew about the steeples and through the trees of the public promenades, have all emigrated; and the same thing happened during the cholera seasons of 1836 and 1854.
According to Sir. Samuel W. Baker, the same phenomenon occurred at Mauritius, where the martins, which exist in immense numbers the year round, wholly disappeared during the prevalence of the cholera. It is stated that during the prevalence of yellow fever at Memphis and Shreveport the absence of the birds was similarly noticed.