178 The Carnivora. 
to the risk of contracting the disease. Notwithstanding that 
the police have been very frequently bitten in effecting their 
capture, and the keepers at the Home literally hundreds of 
times, more or less severely, neither hydrophobia nor any 
other serious consequence of the injury, has ever resulted 
to any of these men. 
The destruction of the dogs has hitherto been carried out 
by the administration of prussic acid, with, of course, some 
danger to the keepers themselves, both from the dogs and the 
fumes of the acid, a method described by Professor Pritchard 
as ‘‘a momentary shock only; but the pain’ experienced 
during that moment is indescribably bad.” In the opinion of 
several physiologists whom I have consulted, there is no pain 
whatever. However that may be, there always appears to me 
to be a moment or two of terrible suffering, and it is desir- 
able to make absolutely certain that there shall be none. 
The dog possesses an extraordinary power of resisting poisons 
of the narcotic class. 
A friend asked my help in destroying an Irish spaniel of 
about thirty pounds weight, suffering from cancer of the jaw. 
I procured eight grains of the best morphia, and gave this 
enormous dose to him, after keeping him twelve hours without 
food. Three hours afterwards, he was sleeping comfortably, 
but was easily roused by his master’s voice. He was placed 
on his bed, in full expectation that he would pass away 
quietly during the night. Greatly to our surprise, however, 
he was alive in the morning, and walked down stairs, exhibit- 
ing no more effect of the poison than a slight unsteadiness 
in his gait. By the same evening, when I went to give him 
half an ounce of prussic acid, almost all trace of the effects 
of the morphia had disappeared. 
It ought not to be necessary to caution unskilled persons 
against the use of such poisons as prussic acid; but there are 
those who, considering themselves skilled, readily undertake to 
destroy dogs, and often make a terrible blunder of it. The 
acid should be quite fresh, and should be carefully drawn from 
