Abstract

A bedsonial agent was isolated from pooled venous blood of four healthy nestling Grey Herons (Ardea cinerea) trapped near Vellore, South India, in January 1964. Provisional identification, based on the finding of typical inclusion bodies in brain-tissue smears from infected mice, was confirmed in complement-fixation tests with known bedsonial reagents. The agent was highly virulent for parakeets but nonpathogenic for 3-week-old mice inoculated intraperitoneally. It produced typical bedsonial colonies in yolk sacs of chick embryos and in tissue culture.