Abstract
You ask in one of your “Notes” (p. 329), what can be the cause of birds leaving a locality before the approach of cholera? The following anecdote may be of interest, but I of course cannot vouch for its having any real connection with the subject. It must have been in the summer of 1848 that I was invited to meet a party at my uncle's house in the Close at Salisbury, on the occasion of the visit of the Antiquarian Society. On arriving I found the cholera raging, and the party put off. There were in the house only the gardener and his wife, whom, having been previously servants to my father, I had known from my childhood. The gardener told me that, just before the outbreak of the disease, the man whose duty it was to oil the vane upon the spire had made his annual ascent (of 404 feet), and had perceived a foul scent, which, it seems, had not been noticed below. The inhabitants connected this with the appearance of the epidemic shortly afterwards. Birds might no doubt be affected by such a circumstance.
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FISHER, O. Birds and Cholera. Nature 28, 342 (1883). https://doi.org/10.1038/028342a0
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1038/028342a0
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