490 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Pub. Doc. 



century.* On Aldabra Island, about two hundred miles 

 north-west of Madagascar, cats are common. They have 

 decimated the birds, having exterminated a flightless rail, an 

 interesting bird peculiar to this group of islands. Cats are 

 also numerous on Glorioso Island, and, as a consequence, the 

 birds on this island are even less common than on Aldabra. f 



Dogs destroy comparatively few birds, but some dogs will 

 eat every egg they can find. Some dogs catch and kill 

 young and even adult game birds. Dogs, like cats, kill other 

 animals for sport. They are not nearly so expert at catching 

 birds as cats, but they chase and molest birds even where 

 they cannot catch them. 



TJie Red Fox. Fifty-eight people regard the fox as 

 one of the most injurious enemies of birds, thus placing it 

 next to the cat in destructiveness. This is entirely at vari- 

 ance with my experience. I have followed the tracks of 

 foxes for many weary miles through the snow about Ware- 

 ham, where they seem to live, in winter at least, on mice, 

 marine animals, an occasional muskrat, and such bones and 

 dead marine and other animals as they can pick up ; but 

 I have never seen any conclusive evidence there that a fox 

 had killed a bird. My son dug out a fox's burrow, but 

 there was no sign that any live bird had been taken there. 

 Foxes pick up all sorts of meat scraps, chicken legs, heads, 

 etc., and kill some birds, as well as poultry; but, accord- 

 ing to my experience, this is the exception and not the rule. 

 Mr. William Brewster, who has been in the woods more 

 than most gunners or sportsmen, tells me that he has seen 

 very little positive evidence of the destruction of birds by 

 foxes, although occasionally they kill game birds. Mr. 

 William S. Perry of Worcester says that foxes kill practi- 

 cally no birds. He has shot a great many foxes and exam- 

 ined their stomach contents, as well as those of foxes killed 

 by others, and says he has never found the remains of a 

 bird in a fox's stomach. At a recent meeting of the Massa- 

 chusetts Fish and Game Protective Association, Mr. A. B. 



* "The danger of introducing noxious animals and birds," Dr. T. S. Palmer, 

 Year Book of the United States Department of Agriculture for 1898, pp. 89, 

 90. 



t Proc. U. S. National Museum, XVI., 18&4, pp. 762, 764. 



