196                               Rhinosporidiosis in Bovines

get arrested in the mucus present in the nose of man or animals, and under
favourable circumstances attack the nasal mucous membrane and produce
lesions.

Man has also got the habit of swallowing a part of his nasal discharge
particularly when it reaches the posterior nares and if one has rhinosporidial
lesion in his nose, he will swallow spores along with the nasal discharge.
Such spores naturally pass out through faeces. In villages, people defaecate
on the fields or other defaecating areas near tanks, nullahs, etc. Further,
some people have the habit of blowing their noses so as to throw the nasal
discharge on the ground and with it spores will also be thrown out if that
person has nasal lesions. Some of those spores, whether in the faeces or in the
nasal discharge, may germinate into the saprophytic infective forms, given the
time, optimum temperature and moisture. Those may be primary or addition-
al sources from which the infective material is disseminated through
dust or through stagnant water to which surface washings from infected areas
gain access during the rains. (It is probable that soiled fingers also carry the
infection to the nose, eye, etc., in the human being).

(b) Is the Infective material water-borne ? Mandlik [1937] observes that
rhinosporidial infection in Poona and its neighbourhood is localised to areas
divisible into groups and that the infection in these groups is localised to in-
fected water of certain wells, tanks or infected sections in the river course.
He holds that the spores protected with the stout chitinoid envelopes, escape
with the nasal discharge into the water of tanks or pools when bathers with
rhinosporidial lesions swim in them and those spores infect later some of the
unlucky persons that swim or dive in such water. In other words, according
to Mandlik, the infection is direct, and direct transmission with such spores
has been negatived by experimental evidence. Hence the water should have
become infective in some other way. It has been pointed out above that
surface washings, and along with them spores of the saprophytic form of the
fungus may gain entrance to more or less stagnant water of tanks, wells, etc.,
from arable lands or defaecation areas. Mandlik [1937] says that the tanks,
etc., which he found infective are subject to inundation during rains. Hence
it is reasonable to suppose that tanks, etc., may receive infective material from
surface washings.

Thus, it would appear that infection through dust and water can well be
explained if the existence of a saprophytic form of the fungus is admitted, the
supposition of which is not unreasonable, since direct infection with spores
from the lesion is not possible.

                                        12. SUMMARY

1. Nineteen cases of rhinosporidiosis in the nose of animals, consisting of
eighteen bullocks and one pony are now recorded in addition to four animals
recorded by Ayyar.

2. Rhinosporidiosis in a pony in the Northern Circars is recorded for
the first time.