To the Editor of the "Nontn-Crina: Dat News."
Sm—It has been often proposed to start a Kennel Club at Shanghai. T believe that efforts made in this direction never proved suecessfal as a Kennel Club on the lines Proposed up to now did not offer members sufficient advantages to make them take up the project with sufficient energy. However, if a Kennel Club could be organized conjunction with a veterinary establishment, somewhat on the clines as laid' down below, I think it, would offer sufficiently large advantages to members to make them join such a club; also the club would fill a long felt want. would suggest the club be orga ed somewhat on the following ines:
(1) Start a kennel club at Shanghai, members paying an annual fee' of, say Tls. 10 per annum. Engage from home a qualified, young and energetic veterinary surgeon to act for the club as secretary and vet, Obtain at the outskirts of the Settlement grounds for the club, with "kennels attached and where the vet could reside. The initial expenses for obtaining grounds for the club, erecting kennels, ete., could be valsed by interest-bearing debentures.
Charge members half the eust tomary Shanghai fees, those fees to go to the vet; non-members to. be charged full fees, half to go to the club, half to the vet.
The club to issue certificates to rank the same as pedigree gertifientes as issued at home. The club to arrange annual dog shows.
Besides attending to the den Al duties us secretary of the lub, which would not be very onerous, the vet's chief atten-should be directed towards studying the diseases peculiar to dogs in China, and especially at Shanghai," and to. ive members advice by means. of Jeetures or otherwise ax how hest to prevent wickness dogs.
These are in a general way the broad outlines on which f think a Kennel Club at Shanghai would tueceed. The advantages to every one who keeps dogs at Shan; V/or takes an interest in them fre apparent. In Europe the dread disease for dogs and no efforts are spared to com. bat this disease, Although dis. temper also takes heavy toll. in China, this disease is not nearly fatal to our canine friends ax other diseases, like worms in. the heart, dysentery and malaria, lo not think a single dog in Shanghai is quite free of one the other of these diseases; that is to say, if the dog has stayed more than a year in Shanghai, Furthermore, 1 hardly think T shall be contradicted in asserting that scarcely one dig out of a thousand dies in Shanghai from old age, but every dog bred and reared in Shanghai dies before five "years old—in the majority of cases much before this age—from one of the three discuses mentioned above, leaving distemper quite out of the question. The study of these diseases, vin, worms in the hea, dysentery and malaria has only be sun and hardly the fringe of this vast subject hax been touched. The study of these diseases offers great-scope for scientific research than any one man can hope to exhaust in A life time, We have got an excellent foreign veterinary establish-ament at Shanghai and' far from me to say anything against thy same, but first of all these people are not specialists for dogs alone, they are here to fight disease in all animals; secondly, the! field is so vast, as already' sai above, that not one mam and not alf-a-dozen men can hope to cope with the same. There can, therefore, be no doubt whatsoever that there is room for another vet to specialize in the diseases to which our canine friends are subject in China,
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.