252 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



1897-9, and I will give here the substance of the 

 notes I made at the time. They have among my 

 notes on many subjects a peculiar interest to me as 

 a naturalist because in the comments I made at 

 the time I ventured to make a prediction which 

 has not been fulfilled. I was astonished and 

 delighted to find that (on this one occasion) I had 

 proved a false prophet. 



The dog-muzzling question (I wrote) does not 

 interest me personally, since I keep no dog, nor 

 love to see so intelligent and serviceable a beast 

 degraded to the position of a mere pet or plaything 

 a creature that has lost or been robbed of its 

 true place in the scheme of things. Looking at the 

 matter from the outside, simply as a student of 

 the ways of animals, I am surprised at the outcry 

 made against Mr. Long's order, especially here in 

 London, where there is so great a multitude of 

 quite useless animals. No doubt a large majority 

 of the dogs of the metropolis are household pets, 

 pure and simple, living indoors in the same rooms 

 as their owners, in spite of their inconvenient 

 instincts. On this subject I have had my say in 

 an article on " The Great Dog Superstition," for 

 which I have been well abused; the only instinct 

 of the dog with which I am concerned at present 

 is that of pugnacity. This is like his love of certain 

 smells disgusting to us, part and parcel of his 

 being, so that for a dog to be perfectly gentle and 

 without the temper that barks and bites must be 



