Revised Jun 22 2021
If any person under the age of ten years shall kill a cat, he or she shall receive corporal punishment. If any one, between the ages of ten and fifteen, kill a cat, he or she shall pay a fine of twenty-five dollars; half the fine to be given to the informer, the other half to the public. All masters of families convicted of killing a cat shall be fined fifty dollars; half the fine to be given to the informer, the other half to the public.
If a fowl be seen trespassing in a garden, the proprietor of the garden is allowed to shoot and keep it, while the owner of the fowl is obliged to return the charge of powder and shot expended in killing the bird. (This is the law; but the practice is to send back the dead fowl, and drop the claim for ammunition.) If a pig be seen trespassing, no one is allowed to give information excepting to the owner of the land, that he may not be baulked in whatever course he may think to adopt.
Squid (a glutinous fish, in shape not unlike a starfish) is not allowed to be taken for food from off the rocks at the north end of the island, excepting by the owner of the rocks; but any one may take it for bait, when going fishing.
Carving upon trees is forbidden. "It seems," says Mr. Brodie, "that the lads and maidens used to amuse themselves with carving true love-knots, which are considered by the elders, who had written their own long ago, as a practice fraught with danger." The trees generally used for the above purposes were the large banana and plantain. It is as easy to write upon the leaves of these trees as upon paper.