806 POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



these renegades into the penetralia of their strongholds. Sergeant 

 Esterman, who shared the potluck of a Cuban insurgent camp in the 

 capacity of a gunsmith, estimates the wild-dog population of the prov- 

 ince of Santiago alone at half a million, and predicts that in years to 

 come their raids will almost preclude the possibility of profitable cattle- 

 breeding in eastern Cuba. 



Still, the perro pelon, or " tramp dog," as the Creoles call the 

 wolfish cur, is perhaps a lesser evil, where its activity has tended to 

 check the over-increase of another assisted immigrant. Three hun- 

 dred years ago West Indian sportsmen began to import several breeds 

 of Spanish rabbits, and with results not always foreseen by the agri- 

 cultural neighbors of the experimenters. Rabbit meat, at first a 

 luxury, soon became an incumbrance of the provision markets, and 

 finally unsalable at any price. Every family with a dog or a trap- 

 setting boy could have rabbit stew for dinner six times a week, and 

 load their peddlers with bundles of rabbit skins. 



The burrowing coneys threatened to undermine the agricultural 

 basis of support, when it was learned that the planters of the Eort 

 Isabel district (Hayti) had checked the evil by forcing their 

 dogs to live on raw coney meat. The inexpensiveness of the ex- 

 pedient recommended its general adoption, and the rapidly multiply- 

 ing quadrupeds soon found that " there were others." The Spanish 

 hounds, too, could astonish the census reporter where their progeny 

 was permitted to survive, and truck farmers ceased to complain. 



In stress of circumstances the persecuted rodents then took refuge 

 in the highlands, where they can still be seen scampering about the 

 grassy dells in all directions, and the curs of the coast plain turned their 

 attention to hutia venison and the eggs of the chaparral pheasant and 

 other gallinaceous birds. On the seacoast they also have learned to 

 catch turtles and subdivide them, regardless of antivivisection laws. 

 How they can get a business opening through the armor of the larger 

 varieties seems a puzzle, but the canis rutilus of the Sunda Islands 

 overcomes even the dog-resisting ability of the giant tortoise, and in 

 Sumatra the bleaching skeletons of the victims have often been mis- 

 taken for the mementos of a savage battle. 



IsTear Bocanso in southeastern Cuba the woods are alive with cap- 

 uchin monkeys, that seem to have escaped from the wreck of some 

 South American trading vessel and found the climate so congenial 

 that they proceeded to make themselves at home, like the ring-tailed 

 colonists of Fort Sable, in the Florida Everglades. The food supply 

 may not be quite as abundant as in the equatorial birthland of their 

 species, but that disadvantage is probably more than offset by the 

 absence of tree-climbing carnivora. 



Millions of runaway hogs roam the coast swamps of all the larger 



