■276 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan., 



A Member. Another point about this thing, Mr. Chair- 

 man, is that the selectmen do not agree, and then local politics 

 always enter into it. If a selectman is friendly to you, he will 

 pay your claim. If he is not, I know of instances where just 

 claims have been held back for a good while. 



Mr. DooLiTTLE. I agree with the member that has just 

 spoken. Many times a selectman does not want to pay a claim 

 for damages, because he is afraid it is going to make enemies. 

 Politics enters into the dog business very much, and I am 

 inclined to thing that we ought to have a man who should make 

 it his sole business just to look after the dogs, and to put that 

 man under a bond. Then, if he did not do it, he should forfeit 

 his bond. In these days of hydrophobia when all of these 

 miserable curs are running at large, the damage, in my 

 opinion, comes largely from dogs that are kept by people that 

 work in factories, and who are away from home during the 

 day. Lots of them you will find have two or three or four 

 dogs. They do not need them any more than they do wings 

 just at present. A great many of them do not pay -any taxes 

 or take out any license on their dogs either, and when the tax 

 collector undertakes to collect they will claim they do not own 

 them. 



Mr Stadtmueller. Mr. Chairman, I would like to say 

 just a few more words before this discussion closes. I have 

 been much impressed by the unanimity of feeling that ap- 

 parently exists among the farmers here. We are not so far 

 apart as appeared in the first place. 



Now as to the cause of the decline of the sheep industry 

 in the state of Connecticut, I still adhere to my original proposi- 

 tion. In reply to the statements that have been made I want 

 to ask those who think that the difficulty has been entirely with 

 dogs what they think they did with the dogs when the sheep 

 population was very high in this state. Why do you think 

 that the dogs ever let it grow to the dimensions it did attain? 

 Why did the number of sheep ever attain the magnitude that 



