A Rat and a Rat-Flea Survey of Ships at the Port of New York.

New York, owing to the tremendous volume and variety of its shipping and the consequent large amount of interesting material, presents an excellent opportunity for the study of various quarantine problems. One of these was to obtain accurate information concerning the rat and rat flea infestation of ships and the factors which influence their prevalence. While conditions in New York have been favorable to securing reliable data as to rats, the cold climate in winter and certain local factors, preventing sufficient trapping of live rats on ships, have interfered with making a thoroughly reliable flea survey.