One of our antelope arrivals, apparently in perfect health when received, was on general principles kept isolated in rigid quarantine for two months.  At the expiration of that period, no disease of any kind having become manifest, the animal was placed on exhibition, with two others that had been in the Park for more than a year, in perfect health.

In one more week the late arrival developed a swelling on its jaw, drooled at the corner of the mouth, and became feverish,—­sure symptoms of the dread disease.  At once it was removed and isolated, but in about 10 days it died.  The other two antelopes were promptly attacked, and eventually died.

The course of the disease is very intense, and thus far it has proven incurable in our wild animals.  We have lost about 10 antelopes from it, and one deer, usually, in each case, within ten days or two weeks from the discovery of the first outward sign,—­the well known swelling on the jaw.  One case that was detected immediately upon arrival was very persistently treated by Dr. Blair, and the animal actually survived for four months, but finally it succumbed.  From first to last not a single case was cured.

In 1912, the future of the prong-horned antelope in real captivity seems hopeless.  We have decided not to bring any more specimens to our institution, partly because all available candidates seem reasonably certain to be affected with lumpy-jaw, and partly because we are unwilling to run further risks of having other hoofed animals inoculated by them.  Today we are anxiously wondering whether the jaw disease of the prong-horn is destined to exterminate the species.  Such a catastrophe is much to be feared.  This is probably one of the reasons why the antelope is steadily disappearing, despite protection.

In 1906 we discovered the existence of actinomycosis among the black mountain sheep of northern British Columbia.  Two specimens out of six were badly affected, the bones of the jaws being greatly enlarged, and perforated by deep pits.  The black sheep of the Stickine and Iskoot regions are so seldom seen by white men, save when a sportsman kills his allotment of three specimens, we really do not know anything about the extent to which actinomycosis prevails in those herds, or how deadly are its effects.  One thing seems quite certain, from the appearance of the diseased skulls found by the writer in the taxidermic laboratory of Frederick Sauter, in New York.  The enormous swelling of the diseased jaw bones clearly indicates a disease that in some cases affects its victim throughout many months.  Such a condition as we found in those sheep could not have been reached in a few days after the disease became apparent.  Now, in our antelopes, the collapse and death of the victim usually occurred in about 10 days from the time that the first swelling was observed:  which means a very virulent disease, and rapid progress at the climax.  The jaw of one of our antelopes, which was figured in Dr. Blair’s paper in the Eleventh Annual Report of the New York Zoological Society (1906) shows only a very slight lesion, in comparison with those of the mountain sheep.