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I had a somewhat similar experience with dogs killing the shrubbery in front of my house, after the telegraph poles and trees had been removed from the street. And I succeeded in breaking up the frolic, although I didn't have to resort to arsenic in doing so. I had pictures of ferocious looking Tomcats done in yellow, and I placed these pictures in front of the shrubbery.
The idea was not exactly my own, but all the same it worked like a charm. . . .
W. G. Cox Burlington, N. C.
Wood v. Segrave
Sirs: Would you print in your Letters column a summary of the speed boat records made by Gar Wood the late Sir Henry Segrave. I should like to know the speed made by the late Sir Henry on the day of his death. Please inform me also as to the greatest speed made in a sea-flea and who by. This is to settle an argument and we have agreed that TIME'S report decides the winner. H. C. McGuire Cobourg, Ont.
Gar Wood's best average: 93.123 m. p. h. The late Major Sir Henry O'Neal De-hane Segrave's best: 98.76 m. p. h. After breaking the record, one June day last year in Lake Windermere, Major Segrave forced Miss England II to 101.11 m. p. h., struck a water-logged tree branch, hurtled to his death. Last week the reconditioned Miss England II carried Racer Kaye Don 100 m. p. h. on Lough Neagh, Ireland, in a trial preparatory to attempting the world's record at Buenos Aires before the Prince of Wales. The sea-flea (outboard hydroplane) record: 50.9 m. p. h., by Ray Pregenzer of Antioch, Ill.—ED.
Wolves & Moujiks
Sirs:
On p.180 of Paul de Kruif's estimable work Microbe Hunters, the author writes of nineteen Russian peasants, moujiks, who went to Paris (after having been badly mangled by a mad wolf) for the Pasteur treatment of rabies. Dr. (?) de Kruif further relates that all but three of these unfortunates were saved, "and all the world raised a paean of thanks" to Pasteur.
Now, along comes Dr. Axel Munthe, with his equally estimable book The Story of San Michcle and tells us, on p. 67, of the "terrible episode of the six Russian peasants bitten by a pack of mad wolves and sent to the Institut Pasteur." Dr. Munthe continues with his sorry tale of how these six moujiks all became "raving mad" and the "doomed men" were "helped to a painless death" and "all of the newspapers were full of the most ghastly descriptions of the death of the Russian moujiks."
Won't you or one of your erudite readers aid an oldTIMER, and tell us how many moujiks? and did they live or die? and was it wolf or wolves?
MRS. J. G. HAMILTON
San Mateo, Calif.
Number of bitten moujiks: 19. Number of wolves: 1. Moujiks cured: 16. Moujiks dead: 3. The wolf ran amuck in Smolensk province in March 1886. For two days & two nights it wrandered, at tacking everyone it met. One badly bitten man finally slew the beast with an axe. A Russian physician took the victims to Paris. Pasteur treated 16 of them with a new, intensive treatment (two inoculations daily). The three patients who died were treated by the then ordinary method (one inoculation in several days). The Tsar gave Pasteur a diamond cross of the Order of St. Anne and 100,000 francs for Pasteur Institute.—ED.
Folsom Break, 1903
Sirs: