INSOMNIA IN DOMESTIC ANIMALS.

Wairarapa Daily Times, Volume 6, Issue 1682, 10 May 1884, Page 4

INSOMNIA IN DOMESTIC ANIMALS.

If thero be one thing above another that I revel in it is science, I have devoted much of my life to scientific research, and though it hasn't made much stir in the scientific world so far, I am positive that when I am gone the scientists of our day will miss me, and the read-nosed theorist will como and shed the scalding tear over my humblo tomb, My attention was first attracted to insomnia as tho foe of the domestic animal, by the strange appearance of a favorite dog named Lncretia Borgia. I did not name this animal Lncretia Borgia, He was named when I purchased him. In his eccentric and abnormal thirst for blood he favored Lncretia, but in sex he did not, I got him partly because he loved children, Tho owner said Lucretia Borgia was an ardent lover of children, and I found that he was. He seemed to lovo them best in tho spring of the year when thoy wero tender. He would have eaten up a favorite child of mine if the youngster hadn't left a rubber ball in his pocket which clogged tho glottis of Lucretia till I could get there and disengage what was left of the child.

Lucretia soon after tins began to be restless, He would come to my casement and lift up liis voice and how] into the bosom of the silent night. At first I thought that ho had found someone in distress or wanted to get me out of doors and save my life. 1 went out several nights in a weird costume that I had made up of garments belonging to different members of my family, I dressed carefully in the dark and stole out to kill the assassin referred to by Lucretia, but he was not there. Then the faithful animal would run up to uve and with almost human, pleading oyes, bark and run away toward a distant alley. I immediately decided that some one was suffering there. I had read in books about dogs that led their masters away to the suffering and saved people's lives, so when Lucretia came to me with his great, honest, eyes and took little mementoes out of the calf of my leg and then galloped off seven or eight blocks, I followed him in the chill air of night and my Mosaic clothe?. I wandered away to where the dog stopped behind a livery stable, and there, lying in a shuddering heap on the frosty ground, lay tho still, white features of a soup hone that had outlived its usefulness,

On the way back I met a physician who had been up town to swear in an American citizen who would vote 21 years later if he lived. The physician stopped me and was going to tab me to tho Home of the Friendless when he discovered who I was.

You wrap a tall man, with a Wm. H, Seward noso, in a flannell robe, cut plain, and then put a plug.hat and a Eealfllcin sacquo and 'Arclis overtimes on him and put him out in the stioot, under the gaslight, with his trim purple ankles just revealing themselves as ho madly gallops after a hydrophobia infested dog, and it is not, after all, surprising that people's curiosity should bo a littlo excited,

After I had introduced myself to tho physician and asked him for a cigar, oxplaining that I could not find any in tho clothes I had on I asked him about Lucretia Borgia. I told tho doctor how Lucretia seemed restless nights and nervous and irritable days, and how he seemed to be almost a mental wreck, and asked him what the trouble was.

Ho said it'was undoubtedly 'insomnia.' He said it was a bad caso of it, too. I told him I thought so myself, 1 said I didn't mind tho insomnia that Lucretia had so much as I did my own. I was getting mora insomnia on my hands than I could use. He gave me something to administer to Lucretia. Ho said I must put it in a link of sausage and leave the sausage where it would appear that I did not want the dog to get it, and then Lucretia would eat it greedily, I did so, It worked well so far as the administration of the remedy was concerned, but it was fatal to my little high Btrung, youthful dog. It must have contained something of a deleterious oharaotor, for the next morning

a coarse man took Lucretia Borgia by the tail mid laid him where the. violets blow. Malignant insomnia is' fast becoming the great'foe to the modern American dog.—Bill Nye, •'.". I