68 
in g. The most harmful characteristic of the cat is its tend- 
ency to revert to a wild state. If a dog loses its master and 
cannot find its home, it seeks to form the acquaintance of a 
new master ; hut the cat is quite as likely to take to the woods 
and run wild. It then becomes a terror to all living things 
which it can master. Whoever turns out or abandons a cat 
or a kitten in the country has much to answer for. Proofs 
of the destructiveness of cats are not wanting. They were 
introduced on Sable Island, off the coast of Nova Scotia, 
about 1880. They ran wild, and, multiplying rapidly, ex- 
terminated the rabbits which had been in possession of the 
island for half a century. 1 On Aldabra Island, about two 
hundred miles northwest of Madagascar, cats have decimated 
the birds and exterminated a flightless rail, an interesting 
bird peculiar to this group of islands. Cats are also numer- 
ous on Glorioso Island, and, as a consequence, the birds on 
this island are even less common than on Aldabra. 2 
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 ani- 
mals for sport. They are not nearly so expert as cats at 
catching birds, but they chase and molest birds, even where 
they cannot catch them. 
The 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 variance 
with my experience. I have followed the tracks of foxes for 
many weary miles through the snow about Wareham, where 
they seem to live, in winter at least, on mice, fish, 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 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, according to my experience, this is 
the exception and not the rule. Mr. William Brewster, who 
1 “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. 
2 Proceedings United States National Museum, XVI., 1894, pp. 762, 764. 
