as wrong to-day as it was a thousand years before the time of Christ. Then it was decreed: “If an ox gore a man or woman, that they die, [and] if the ox were wont to push with his horn in time past, and it hath been testified to his owner, and he hath not kept him in, but that he hath killed a man or a woman; the ox shall be stoned, and his owner also shall be put to death.” (Ex. xxi, 28, 29.) If a man was careless of the safety of his neighbor, if after he had been duly warned that his ox was “wont to push with his horn,” he still allowed him to run at large, then the most severe penalty known to law, that of death, was meted out.
Public sentiment in some states goes even further, and there are state boards charged with the stamping out of stock diseases, which are given power to enter upon a farm and destroy animals, if it is necessary for the protection of the sound stock of other farmers. In the Pacific Northwest there are state laws and state inspectors for the purpose of stamping out orchard pests, and the inspectors have a
