70 BOAKD OF AGRICULTUEE. [Jan. 



Mr. BoAVDiTCH. If we are not getting too for from the 

 subject of sheep, I would like to say I have spent a good 

 deal of time through two sessions of the Legislature on the 

 subject of the dog law, and I can assure you it would be im- 

 possible to procure any great change in the present law, 

 on account of the very strong feeling among the majority of 

 people about dogs. There is one thing that we have learned, 

 that in agriculture we have new weeds and new bugs for 

 every new crop we grow ; but in some way we get the best 

 of the weeds and the bugs. Now, I would have the sheep 

 inclosed securely. It is more trouble, and it costs more, 

 but it is very seldom a dog will jump over a picket fence, 

 particularly in the dark. I have kept three hundred to four 

 hundred sheep the last three or four years ; sometimes six 

 hundred or seven hundred ; I hurdle most of them at night, 

 and I have had, during the ten or twelve years that I have 

 kept sheep, two ram lambs killed ; and I assure you that, in 

 the town of Marlborough, which is a shoe town, we have as 

 many dogs as any town can boast of. It is the care and 

 watchfulness in keeping sheep which is needful to make them 

 pay, as it is in any other farm crop or farm animal we try to 

 raise. It will be some expense, in an outlying pasture, to 

 hurdle at night ; but if you have a large flock of sheep, it 

 will cost but a trifle per head. 



Mr. Taft. I am opposed to dogs ; but I believe it to be 

 impossible to accomplish anything by trying to amend the 

 dog law, there are so many men who keep these dogs. I 

 think only about two years ago a man found a couple of 

 dogs with his sheep, and one of them was shot. I happened 

 to be upon the board of selectmen. I found the dog that 

 was killed. It was a shepherd dog, and somebody is going 

 to feel very badly when he learns his dog is killed. It 

 turned out that those two shepherd dogs came from eight 

 miles away from that pasture. You could not have bought 

 either one of those, dogs for one hundred dollars. One of 

 them was owned by a man who had just died. I do not 

 suppose his widow would have sold the dog at any price ; 

 she had the feeling that the dog was part of the family. It 

 is so throughout the State. It is not that class of dogs that 

 generally do the damage ; it is the mongrel dogs. Mr. Bow- 



