i88o.l 
Modem Cynolatry . 
757 
A few such sentences would protect our children from being 
worried by ferocious beasts for a century to come. 
I have termed the plea that the dog m question had never 
before, as far as its owner was aware, made an attack upon 
any person, “ irrelevant.” The fadt is that, save o 
those whom it knows, every dog of any considerable degree 
of size and strength must be regarded as dangerous. No one 
knows when or against whom it may suddenl y c ™ dudt 
itself according to its true nature, as a beast of prey, surely, 
then, those who persist in allowing such creatures to - 
quent public places should be held criminally responsible 
for any outbreak that may occur. . , , 
But it will be said these 14,000 persons, or one in about 
every 2300 of the entire population of the United Kingdom, 
thus y wantonly maimed year by year for the sake 0 the dog- 
fanciers’ amusement are only wounded, not slam outrig t. 
I will turn, therefore, to the official statistics of hydropho- 
bia in England and Wales. The number of cases, or, in other 
words, of deaths, for the eleven years 1866 to ^inclusive 
is given at 387, or on an average 35 yearly ! Now as the 
population of South Britain does not greatly exceed 25 mi - 
Hons, we have here one person done to death by dogs not out 
of every “ ten millions,” but out of every 700,000- a some- 
what different result. 
During the past year no fewer than 103 persons were 
bitten by mad dogs in Paris and its suburbs. Of these 30 are 
known to have died from hydrophobia. If we estimate the 
population of the French capital at two millions, this gives 
a death-rate from this one utterly gratuitous cause of : m 
66 000 1 Five hundred mad dogs and a score of mad cats 
were destroyed by the police in the course of the year. In 
The months of July and August alone 473° stray dogs were 
taken to the fourriere, and all but 200 were killed. In conse- 
quence of this most “judicious butchery,” 1 Dr. Lindsay 
wUl permit me thus to modify his utterance there has been 
a great reduction in the number of persons bitten and in -he 
death-rate from hydrophobia. . , 
I am aware that a most fantastically impudent plea has 
lately been advanced in opposition to the plain moral to be 
drawn from these fadts and figures. We are told that if 
persons are bitten by a dog and die subsequently with the 
well-known symptoms of hydrophobia, it is merely the effedt 
of their “ excited imagination.” . , 
Had they strength of mind to repress their fears, no harm, 
we are told, would ensue! In reply to this lamentable 
sophism, I may point out that cattle, sheep, and horses after 
