PUNCH, OR THE LONDON CHARIVARI. VOL. 153. AUGUST 22, 1917. [Illustration: A POULTRY-FANCIER, HEARING THAT DEFENCES AT THE FRONT ARE SOMETIMES DISGUISED AS HEN-HOUSES, DETERMINED TO REVERSE THE PROCESS. BEING A BIT OF AN ARTIST HE DISGUISED HIS HEN-HOUSE BY GIVING IT A WARLIKE APPEARANCE. THE ENEMY WAS STRICKEN WITH PANIC.] * * * * * CHARIVARIA. Eighty-eight policemen were bitten by dogs in 1913, but only forty-four in 1915, says _The Daily Mail_, and quotes a policeman as saying that "dogs are not half so vicious as they used to be." The true explanation is that policemen no longer taste as good as in the old rabbit-pie days. *** Recent heavy rain and the absence of sunshine have, it is stated, caused corn in Essex to sprout in the ear. This idea of portable allotments is appealing very strongly to busy City men. *** Feeling about the Stockholm Conference is changing a little, and several people suggest that Mr. RAMSAY MACDONALD might be sent as a reprisal. *** Sixty-seven children were recently lost on one day at New Brighton. The fact that they were all restored to their parents before nightfall speaks well for the honesty of the general public. *** The German authorities have further restricted the foods to be supplied to dogs, and German scientists are now trying to grow dachshunds with a shorter span. *** "We have a Coal Controller, but where is the coal?" plaintively asks a contemporary. There is no satisfying the jaundiced Press. *** A well-dressed female baby a month old has been found under the seat of a first-class compartment in a train on the Chertsey line. Several mothers have written to congratulate her upon her courageous and unconventional protest against the fifty per cent. increase in railway fares. *** A Glasgow woman has been fined a guinea for trying to enlist in the Irish Guards. Only the Scottish Courts carry pride of race to these absurd lengths. *** It is announced that the recent increase in the price of bacon was sanctioned by the FOOD CONTROLLER. The news has given great satisfaction to law-abiding consumers, who bitterly resented the unauthorised increases (upon which this is a further increase) that were made under the old _régime_. *** A dress made from banana skins is now being exhibited in London. It is, we believe, a _négligé_ costume, the sort of thing one can slip on at any time. *** "If you had let the boy eat it, it would have punished him a great deal more than I can," said the North London magistrate to a man who was prosecuting a boy for stealing an unripe pear. It is a splendid tribute to the humanity of our stipendiary magistrates that the heroic offer of the boy to accept the greater punishment was promptly refused. ***