72 BOARD OF AGRICULTURE. [Jan. 



bezzleraent or forgery, and has never been back since. He 

 attacked it ; talked a great deal without touching the ques- 

 tion ; said "the idea of killing a pet dog!" And he pic- 

 tured it in such a way that those fellows sat there with tears 

 running down their cheeks. Men went in there with the 

 intention of voting for this amendment. They were told 

 how the wife and children would feel if their dog was killed, 

 and they could not stand it. Women came into the com- 

 mittee rooms with their little dogs. Mr. Angell, the presi- 

 dent of the Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, 

 met us and blocked our way every time. He thought it a 

 wicked shame that dogs should be killed ; but a few years 

 afterwards he changed his sentiments, so that now he is one 

 of the most violent anti-dog men. 



I like to have Mr. Bowditch give us his advice, and we 

 will follow it as well as we can ; but in his great pasture, 

 with great breeding dogs, a mastiff that can chew a little dog 

 up, and with a man ranging round the premises with a 

 double-barrelled shotgun, of course he can do better than 

 others who have not such facilities. 



Mr. Lyman. I imagine that the difficulty of sheep raising 

 in the hill towns of Avestern Massachusetts is not so much on 

 account of dogs as on account of the difficulty in keeping 

 sheep in your own pastures. The abandonment of so many 

 farms in our mountain towns has left a large tract of land 

 open ; and, by travelling over the hill towns in the purchase 

 of sheep, I find that is the greatest trouble. They do not 

 complain so much of the dogs as that there is no place to 

 confine the sheep, and so they have abandoned the keeping 

 of them. 



Question. I would like to inquire if a person that loses 

 ten or fifteen sheep is obliged to find them all before he can 

 recover damages for them? He knows they are gone, and 

 he finds five, but the other five he cannot find. The select- 

 men say, " We shall not pay for the sheep you cannot find." 

 I know one man who hunted three days, but he could not 

 get pay for part of his sheep, because he could not find 

 them. 



Mr. Augur. Mr. Chairman, I have been very greatly 

 interested in this paper and the discussion of it I think it is 



