much additional expense to ratepayers, and would be of no use. He believed that the substitution of collar and medal system for muzzling in Manchester and elsewhere, proved that they found it more efficient than muzzling. He considered, as did his League, that muzzling regulations rather induced than prevented rabies; their only use was to diminish the number of dogs.

WHAT

EXPERTS SAY.

Mr. Sewell's Opinion.

Mr. A. J. Sewell, the veterinary surgeon of the Dogs' Home, is strongly of opinion that muzzling of dogs at the present time is not at all necessary. He wrote to all the veterinary surgeons in London, asking them for statistics. He had 42 replies, and the last case of rabies quoted was 17th November, 1896. At the Dogs' Home there has not been an instance since 12th March of last year, though over 50,000 dogs have passed through the Home since that date. In his canine practice he has not had a case in London since last June, whereas during the 1885 epidemic he had as many as 77 in a twelvemonth.

I believe that London is freer of rabies now (he writes) than it has been for many years, and that the statistics supplied by the Board of Agriculture are misleading, in consequence of being frequently based on police reports, the veterinary inspectors not always seeing the suspected dog before it is destroyed.

He adds that if the muzzling of dogs is really necessary, to be of any use the order should be enforced all over Great Britain and Ireland simultaneously, and the importation of dogs from abroad prohibited. In 1885 Mr. Sewell suggested the "strict muzzling of every dog," and now he comments caustically on Mr. Long's exemption of sporting dogs.

Another Condemnation.

Mr. W. Hunting, F.R.C.V.S., an ex-president of the Royal College of Veterinary Surgeons, County Council veterinary inspector for the Westminster district, and editor of the weekly organ of the veterinary profession, writes:

To the whole veterinary profession the order of the Board of Agriculture insisting upon the muzzles used being made of wire came as a surprise. No authority, either canine or veterinary, had ever ventured an opinion in favour of wire, and it would be interesting to know what arguments or advice induced Mr. Long to sanction it. Owners of dogs are almost unanimous in their opposition to wire muzzles, which were only used by people too careless or too poor to buy leather. Every veterinary surgeon whose practice includes a fair proportion of dogs amongst his patients has experience of the painful sores that result from ill-fitting wire muzzles, and of the more serious accidents caused by broken wire."

It seems that Mr. Hunting is in favour of some "muzzling order," but he condemns in unqualified terms the use of the wire instrument of torture.

When Dogs are not Mad.

Mr. Charles J. Rotherham, one of the hon. vet. surgeons to the Dog-Owners' Protection Association, gives some hints by which policeconstables and others may know when dogs are really mad. He says:

"A really rabid dog never foams at the mouth. Its tongue and lips are brown and hard-looking. The discharge from the mouth is small in quantity, brownish in colour, and hangs about the lips like strings of gum. The eyes have an unnatural fiery glare.

"In apoplexy there is a sudden loss of power; the dog falls down either partially or wholly insensible; the eyes are fixed and bloodshot; the breathing is heavy; there is no foaming at the mouth; there is no discharging of saliva.

unusua.

"In epilepsy the dog is seen to tremble just as the fit is coming on; if the dog tries to move he falls on one side; his jaws begin to champ violently; all the voluntary muscles are powerfully convulsed; generally he utters sharp, short cries, but not always; there is a copious discharge of white frothy saliva; the gums are of a pale leaden hue; when recovering from an epileptic fit the dog has a bewildered look, the eyes having a dull and stupid expression."

Constables who note these points need not commit the error of destroying, on suspicion, a dog that is not afflicted with rabies.

Mr. Vero Shaw's View.

Mr. Vero Shaw, the famous canine authority, has written to the Star :

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SIR,-In reply to your inquiry about this crackbrained muzzling edict of the Board of Agriculture, all I can say about it is that I am perfectly convinced that it is as unnecessary as it is oppressive, and the sooner dog owners unite to compel the authorities to withdraw it, the wiser they will be. In times of panic it is perhaps excusable and natural for boards to lose their heads under the pressure of red tape, but as the collective efforts of the principal veterinary surgeons of London appear to have been unable to produce a rabid dog, the only object that can be seen for enforcing the present order seems to be a desire upon the part of some one-I don't know who-to do a little bit of log-rolling for a friendly wire-worker. The trumpery, flimsy regulation muzzle' affords a standing monument to the stupidity of its designer, as it is neither so efficacious nor so comfortable as the leather ones; but the point is, why should the Board of Agriculture officiously step in and clap on the muzzle just when the County Council have taken it off? The exemptions which have been made form an instance of partiality which is perfectly inexcusable, were it not well known by the authorities that the sporting men would rise in a body against the order. Why, then, should the ordinary dogowner remain silent? Within the last few days I have spoken with dozens of dog-owners of all degrees, some of them believers in the muzzle in times when rabies is prevalent

and the unanimous opinion is that the existing order is oppressive to dog-owners and wholly unjustified by the circumstances which are supposed to influence the promulgation of such decrees. You certainly deserve the thanks of dog-owners for the good fight you are making against official tyranny, and if it is in my humble power to assist the good cause in any way, I shall only be too happy to do so."

Another Expert's View.

A SPIRITED PROTEST AGAINST THE OFFICIAL BOYCOTTING OF MR. ALFRED SEWEll.

Mr. George R. Krehl, who is himself a breeder and fancier of 25 years' experience, and, as editor of the Stockkeeper,-which is the recognized organ of the canine world-is peculiarly competent to speak with authority on all matters concerning dogs, says: "It is a monstrous and inexcusable blunder to impose the muzzle on London at the present moment. We have patiently borne with the muzzle for a very long period, and to-day London is clear of rabies. Never since statistics have been collected on the question has the part to which the new order applies been so free from suspicion of rabies. Mr. Long's action can only be the result of the initial blunder of taking the evidence of absolutely unreliable and unauthoritative persons. I do not complain that I was not called myself, though I could have voiced the opinion of many thousands of dog owners and breeders in every part of the world. But I complain of the crass stupidity of neglecting to call Mr. Alfred Sewell, who probably knows more about the diseases of dogs than any other man in England.

"The average veterinary surgeon knows far more of horses than of dogs, but here is a man of world-wide authority, who has confined himself exclusively to canine practice, who is veterinary surgeon to the Kennel Club and to the Queen, and who is in daily request not only in London, but in the provinces and abroad where he commands the fees of a fashionable physician and this precious committee, which has caused all the trouble, positively does not take his evidence!

"The dog-owning world, which comprises every class of the population, has a right to resent the narrow way in which the whole matter has been dealt with. Mr. Long can't fail to have been told that a partial or local muzzling order must be absolutely ineffective. To be of the least use it must be imposed all over the kingdom, and on every kind of dog, sporting or otherwise. Do that, and at the same time impose vigorous quarantine regula tions on imported dogs, and you would have an absolute guarantee of the extinction of rabies, for it cannot be engendered spontaneously, and it cannot arise from any other canine disorder.

"But there is no need for an order at the present time. The Minister of Agriculture should have given dog owners a rest, and let the dogs enjoy themselves in the Jubilee year."

Mr. Krehl joined in the universal condemnation of the new regulation muzzle. But he admitted that the leather muzzle was open to the official objection that it could too easily be mutilated and rendered useless to prevent biting. As a fair alternative he showed the Star man a Swiss muzzle which meets the utmost official requirement without harassing the dog. Instead of having a useless and irritating wire cage over the top of the dog's head, where it can't possibly bite, it has only a loop of leather to cross the nose and a leather strap to buckle behind the ears supporting a wire muzzle which effectively guards the lower jaw, and leaves room for the dog to open its mouth and to put out its tongue. "What I say is," he concluded, "that we have got the wrong muzzle at the wrong time."

A Breeder and Judge on the Order. That well-known breeder, exhibitor, and judge of the Bull-dog Club, Mr. George Smartt, of East India Road, says :

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'Personally, I see no objection to enforced muzzling order when the circumstances show it to be necessary; but to cause dogs and their owners to be subjected to a restriction of this kind when the facts clearly show there is no justification for it is an injustice to law-abiding citizens and an act of cruelty to our domestic pets. Although interested personally in bull-dogs, I write feelingly for all breeds. The fact remains, however, that throughout my twenty years' experience of this breed, I only recollect one isolated case of rabies. Bull-dogs and, in fact, all short-faced dogs, suffer most dreadfully from the effects of muzzling, especially during the summer months. I own a valuable bull-dog, winner of many prizes, who will not move a step when muzzled. This dog has consequently been confined to the limited space allotted to most London residences during the last twelve months, and now the poor creature must be again banished to solitary confinement. Undoubtedly there are many such cases, which are nothing short of cruelty to animals and a disgrace to modern civilization."

The Proprietor of "The Field" Speaks Out.

Another authority who is decidedly opposed to the muzzling order is Mr. Harding Cox, proprietor of the Field. He has had considerable experience of dogs for the past quarter of a century. "Rabies is an extremely rare disease. In all my lengthy and varied experience I have only met with two doubtful cases, though literally thousands of dogs have passed through my hands.

"If the Board of Agriculture persist in the persecution we have at least one remedy, namely, the exercise of the franchise. Let every dog-owner refuse to vote for a Govern. ment that inflicts such irritating measures, and that same Government would find a serious decrease at the polls."

Cruelty at Public Schools.

A LADY, whose wish it would be wrong

for me to disregard, asks me to write to you about a letter which you have published upon "Cruelty to Animals at Public Schools."* It ought not to be believed that such cruelty as your correspondent describes is a feature of Public School life. May I

say that during the time, now nearly fifteen years, when I have been engaged in the work of educating Public School boys, I have never known or heard of, or had reason to suspect, any such practices as have been described to you, and I feel sure that, if they should exist, they would be. condemned as emphatically by the boys as by the masters.—I am, sir, your obedient servant,

I

J. E. C. WELldon. The Head Master's, Harrow. April 13th, 1897.

The Churches and Cruelty.

N reply to the various correspondents who have criticised the clergy, may I relate my own experience? During the past year I have known clergymen who have preached on the animal question. At the church which I attend in the West End, allusion is constantly made before crowded congregations to the evils of general cruelty and of vivisection, and only last Sunday papers were placed in the pews suggesting various intercessions, and among them was this:-" Pray with all your heart' for all human efforts to diminish the terrible sum of animal pain.'" I have, as a rule, found the clergy full of sympathy, and ready to do all they can to help us.

E. H. BENSON.

33, Ebury Street, London, S.W., April 12th, 1897.

ON perusing the Rev. Fr. Boone's letter

that you published in your March issue, I find him saying that the Roman Catholic Church has always condemned cruelty. May I ask when? I believe that were the infallible (?) Pope to pronounce a condemnation of cruelty to animals, be it practised in the name of sport, science, or fashion, it would materially strengthen the efforts of animals' friends in behalf of animals' welfare; but as Leo has not yet, to the best of my knowledge, taken any steps towards checking (let alone entirely suppressing) cruelty to animals, I think Mr. Boone would be conferring real boon on your readers if he would inform us why it is that membership in all sorts of guilds, sodalities, confraternities, etc., is synonymous with the acquisition of heaps of indulgences, but that as yet no "Band of Mercy" finds a place in the Romish Church, and therefore kindness to animals is unre. See April Animals' Friend.

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"The Church

A visit to Spain does not give me the least ground for supposing that Leo deems bullfighting to be cruel, and, therefore, worthy of discouragement. cruelty," quoth Mr. Boone. has always condemned As a Papist myself, allow me to ask Mr. Boone to peruse page 208 of last March's Zoophilist, and see for himself the enormities enacted at St. Paul's Seminary, Minnesota. Perhaps, how. ever, Mr. Boone entertains as extraordinary ideas as to what constitutes cruelty as his Jesuit colleague at Oxford-Mr. Rickabywhose book has already been noticed in these columns; in any case, however, I trust that, as Mr. Boone has ventured to state that his church condemns cruelty, he will be good enough to inform your readers whether scientific laboratories, whereat vivisection is practised, are to be met with in the Westminster or Southwark Diocesan Seminaries, as then we shall ken whether, when the annual appeals are made to us from the pulpit in behalf of these seminaries, we ought to support these so-called religious training colleges. I can only think that if St. Paul's Seminary is to be taken as a fair example of Romish seminaries it is no wonder that Jesus Christ and all His glorious teachings-which can be summed up in the two words, "Be merciful"-get put quite to one side, and Rickaby's teachings take their place. And possibly, as brutality appears to b instilled into the minds of mere shavelings at their seminaries, it is no wonder that when they get older their notions of amenity to their fellow-beings are so singular.-Yours faithfully, JAMES CUNLIffe.

Middle Temple, London,

April 10th, 1887.

[We insert Mr. Cunliffe's letter because he is inside the church he attacks, and because we know him to be an active worker for the R.S.P.C.A. and the Victoria Street Anti-vivisection Society. All the Christian Churches are more or less culpable in the matter of cruelty to animals, and, in the course of a very varied experience of all forms of Christian worship in this country, we never remember having heard the slightest reference to the question from the pulpit, whatever the clergy and ministers may have done out of the pulpit. This is as true of the Nonconformist, Protestant or Evangelical Churches as of any others. That a new spirit is beginning to pervade the Church of England is clear from Mrs. Benson's letter, and from other evidences which have recently been brought to our notice. For instance, an anonymous correspondent has sent us from Malvern the annual reports for 1893 and 1896 of the Cheltenham and East Gloucestershire

Branches of the R.S.P.C.A., where we find reported some admirable remarks by the Rev. E. T. Griffiths, M.A., who presided on each occasion. We quote the following:

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Every true man felt that the fact that the animal was at his mercy was a reason for his being merciful. As enlightenment advanced, it might well come to be that any one who had been proved to be unable to treat animals without cruelty might be held to be unfit to have charge of them. Animals had much more sense than some persons gave them credit for. The rational treatment of animals might well form a part of technical education. They would not think of committing their clocks to the hands of any one who was unskilful, and it seemed strange that animals, whose organisms were much more sensitive than those of clocks, should be entrusted to people who either had no notion or thought of the right way of treating them. A due regard for animal

life gave also a wider interest in the world around, for what was life but a thing of countless kindly interests and sympathies? and the more kindly interests and sympathies they had, the richer and fuller was the life they lived. Here he would plead earnestly for the teaching of kindness towards animals, not only in the elementary schools, but also in our public schools. It might be thought that if the young were taught the general principles of goodness, these would include kindness to animals, without that subject being particularly mentioned, but it was remarkable how often a duty which was not so much as named was not taken for granted

and even grown up people did not always see a thing until it was pointed out to them. Some things were taught to the young which they could only imperfectly understand and assimilate. But kindness to animals was a subject which they could understand well, and put into immediate and daily practice; it was a subject which would not only fill their lives with new interests, but would also have a directly humanizing effect upon their character."-ED. A.F.]

I

The Shooting of Rare Birds.

WAS greatly grieved to read in your issue for February, a report of the killing of a specimen of that once British bird, the hoopoe, in Lancashire. We lost this bird from our British list, and we are fast losing others, because we have so many collectors, and so few naturalists; natural history is life history, and the duty of all who claim to be naturalists now is to strive to naturalise rare birds, which, like the hoopoe, are capable of living and breeding in our islands.

Although I sympathize with the extract from Mark Twain, which you print under your report of the shooting of the hoopoe, I prefer to base my protest on grounds of a less ethical kind. Yours obediently,

GERARD SMITH, M.R.C.S., L.S.A. London, March 1st, 1897.