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POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY 



taught to relish other than their usual food, 

 cases are cited by M. C. Cornevin in which 

 animals usually carnivorous spontaneously 

 seek vegetables and fruits. A group of well- 

 fed dogs came under his observation which 

 manifested an epicurean taste for plums. He 

 often found them in his morning walks in the 

 orchard, they having crept through the holes 

 in the fence, snapping at the fruit that had 

 fallen off during the night. One of them, 

 when offered bread soaked in bouillon and 

 plums, took the plums. Another dog did not 

 lose his appetite for the fruit when stung by 

 a wasp concealed in a plum, but afterward 

 turned every plum carefully over and exam- 

 ined it before biting it. The dogs seemed 

 to prefer sweet fruits ; they Uked pears as 

 well as plums, and the choicest varieties best. 

 The author was told that shepherds who trade 

 in dogs' skins have found that they got the 

 best prices for the skins of animals that are 

 slain in October after having been fed on 

 fruit during the summer, and that the meat 

 of such dogs had been found to be palatable 

 and destitute of the usual unpleasant flavor. 

 Cats were observed to be fond of melons, 

 and to manifest a decided taste for cooked 

 vegetables, especially leeks and onions. They 

 will abandon for a time the meats given them 

 with their dinners and eat the vegetables 

 only. They are not fond of raw vegetables 

 except asparagus, of which they have been 

 known to keep the young shoots well down 

 by biting off the tips as they appear. A cat 

 is mentioned, however, that lived one sum- 

 mer chiefly upon beans in the pod ; and 

 another that spent the whole season in the 

 garden, beginning with the asparagus bed, 

 then taking to green beans, which he pulled 

 down from the trelUses that supported them ; 

 and next on carrots, of which he ate the tops 

 down to the ground, but did not scratch the 

 soil from the root. This cat would have led 

 the same kind of life a second season, but, 

 being as destructive to the garden as a rabbit, 

 was shot. The fierce and carnivorous marten 

 and weasel enjoy cherries, and become fat 

 and hearty upon them. These peculiarities, 

 and the fruit hunting of foxes, skunks, and 

 bears, have been accounted for by some 

 naturalists as induced by hunger; but the 

 explanation is not sufficient. The tastes are 

 manifested when food of all kinds is most 

 abundant and most easily obtained. A more 



probable explanation is that they are atavis- 

 tic reversions, or are adaptations to peculiar 

 conditions of the digestion and its ferments, 

 demanding the introduction of new agents 

 to re-enforce those already at work, but 

 which may have become enfeebled. The 

 subject is a good one to experiment upon. 



Rcvaccination. — The following para- 

 graph is taken from a " memorandum " re- 

 cently prepared by Dr. Bond for the Jenner 

 Society in England : " The experience of 

 every epidemic, and last but not least of 

 that of Middlesbrough, shows conclusively 

 that if we wish to protect the community 

 against these increasingly frequent scourges 

 we must take as much trouble to promote 

 rcvaccination as we have hitherto taken to 

 promote infant vaccination. So long as the 

 public are led to believe, as they have been 

 hitherto, that vaccination in infancy is the 

 only thing about which the state need take 

 any care, so long will epidemics of so-called 

 'vaccinated' adolescents and adults and of 

 unvaccinated or badly vaccinated children be 

 the opprobrium of our country. There is 

 only one way of effecting this, and that is by 

 requiring, so far as is practicable, every child 

 who enters a school to be efficiently vacci- 

 nated, and that before it leaves school it shall 

 be equally efficiently revaccinated. It is to 

 the rcvaccination of her adolescent popula- 

 tion that Germany owes the remarkable im- 

 munity from epidemics of smallpox which she 

 has for the last twenty years enjoyed rather 

 than to her compulsory vaccination in early 

 childhood, for it is the adolescents and adults 

 whose early pi-otection in infancy has be- 

 come attenuated by age who are most ex- 

 posed to the risks of smallpox. If we can 

 secure their protection by rcvaccination at 

 the end of the school age, as well as that of 

 the children at the commencement of it, we 

 need not trouble ourselves much about the 

 infants. We have been misled in this re- 

 spect by false inferences from the experience 

 of Jenner and the early vaccinators. When 

 infants were the chief sufferers, because the 

 adult population was in a large degree pro- 

 tected by having had the disease, the dis- 

 covery of a means by which these unfortu- 

 nate little victims could be almost absolutely 

 protected naturally led to an undue estimate 

 of the value of infant vaccination, especially 



