OCR Text |
Show JONES' SNAKE-KILLINQ PIGS. Tho Firmar Trained" HU IUorboki to Kxtnulnt HerpenU. "Talk about snakes,' said a resident of Boston tho other day, "there are inor,e of 'em to tho square aero in Florida Flor-ida than In any other part of this glorious glori-ous country. But as numerous as they are they are not half as abundant as they were a few years ago, before any organized effort was made to annihilate annihi-late tho whole serpentine breed. "It seems thata bright idea Involving tho wholobalc extinction of snakes entered en-tered the mind of one William Jones, who up to that time had been a poor farmer struggling to support a big family. fam-ily. Now he 1b one of the solid men of the county, aul ho made all his money by tne successful execution of that idea. He knew that tho .ordinary razorback hog of Florida was a great natural enemy of snakes, and ho set to work to systematically train a whole drove of hogs to liunt down and destroy de-stroy tho reptiles. In a little while he had his swine as thoroughly trained in their part as setter dogs aro drilled to point quail. He first cleared his own farm of a vast quantity of big ones, and then he )egan to hire out his hogs to his neighbors who were bnake-af-fliutcd. The fame of those razbrbaeks spread all over the land and people whose places wero infested with rattlesnakes rat-tlesnakes and men who were clearing up new land sent for Jones' hogs. "This is no romance, for I talked with Jones himself and ho told mo all about it, and exhibited his book of engagements, engage-ments, which also contained a record of nil the snakes slain for the last twelve months. I have overy reason to believe he was stating the facts, for he gave mo a warm invitation to visit his place and promises to give an exhibition ex-hibition that, would demonstrate the skill of his snake-killers." . |