78 FACT AGAINST FICTIOX. 



artificial appliances to land, that around mc, in 

 Dorsetshire, black game and wood-pigeons have 

 ceased to breed, and the former have become 

 almost extinct ? I deeply regret to state, that 

 some dastardly villain, occupying land in the 

 immediate vicinity of Wimborne, has poisoned 

 several beautiful and valuable dogs. He has been 

 traced in his purchase of tlie poison of which these 

 dogs died, and I believe that he has disseminated 

 a report that ^'he bouglit it for the destruction of 

 rats." In the interests of humanity I hope that 

 he did so, and that no such dastardly and low 

 villainous implication, as that of j)urposely poison- 

 ing dogs out of revengeful spleen, can be laid at 

 the door of a man claiming the respectable position 

 of a Dorsetshire farmer. Whatever was the design 

 of the cruel poisoner, he would have done well to 

 remember that the law assigns a very heavy penalty 

 against a villain who, under any pretext whatever, 

 lays poison in 2:)laces to which tlie property of iho 

 public can attain to its destruction. 



The law in such instances, however, does not 

 demand any great amount of jDroof other than 

 circumstantial evidence, for on crime so cowardlyj 

 so cruel, and so villainously destructive to animal^ 



