SHEEP PROTECTION.
The Speaker announced the special order for this hour to be consideration of Mr. Cotton's bill [H R. 36] to protect sheep husbandry. Trustees to register and number all dogs in the State of Indiana. The bill makes it imperative that all owners of dogs should pay the tax, and have them registered by April 1 of the present year. The bill was read the third time.
Mr. COTTON--This bill aims principally at disposing of the dogs that belong to nobody. The record of our State shows that sheep have been decreasing in number in the State for the last five or six years. What is the cause? These curs howling around the country. The cause of this decrease is not in the decline of the price of wool, but it is the dogs killing them all the time. In the last year $5S,000 has been paid by Trustees for sheep killed by dogs. We have to-day not less than 200,000 dogs in the State and less than a million of sheep. I hope this bill will pass, to remedy this growing evil.
The bill passed--yeas, 61; nays, 24.
