A SPANIEL'S FATE.
A correspondent from County Down sends an account of a dog's experience that is worth the attention of dog and animal lovers in all counties :—
" A neighbour took his spaniel bitch for a walk. She was due to have her puppies in ten days' time. She disappeared on the walk and was lost for nine days. At last she was found in a trap with a little family sucking, her. , She was of course a skeleton. It must have been the Mother Love ' that kept her alive."
Now I am told that the promiscuous setting of traps has much
increased in some districts of Ireland. It certainly has in some districts of England. To be more precise, one of the most charming dunes in North Devon—a paradise both for the botanist and ornithologist—is made horrible by the number of steel, gins set in the mouth of the burrows. There, too, they catchh-dogs as well as rabbits. SUch traps inflict the maximum of cruelty. I once found a dead fox that had dragged the trap with him over fields, across a road and into a small wood, where at last it died of pain and weariness. Another fox, obvidusly lame and poor, was recently shot in Berkshire, and when picked up one foot that had been caught in a gin dropped off at a touch. Is it too much to hope that this moving tale of the spaniel bitch may stir Authority to the point of prohibiting the steel gin altogether ? There are other ways of destroying vermin and rabbits that do not inflict extremities of pain or risk the death and torture of our dogs and domestic friends. Legislation on the subject is long overdue.
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