164 HORSE AND MAN. 



a true bulldog, and that, therefore, I was unworthy 

 of belief. 



On the other side, the ' Saturday Beview ' made 

 the following remarks, with which I entirely coin- 

 cide : — ' We cannot imagine how such a lover and 

 observer of animals as Mr. Wood could ever, save 

 in his greenest and most salad days, have entertained, 

 as he confesses he did entertain, the vulgar and 

 utterly unfounded notion that the bulldog is a savage 

 and morose brute ; the bulldog being as amiable 

 an animal as walks the face of the earth.' 



Yery similar was the controversy respecting 

 * Stella,' the mare in question. She was of good lineage, 

 being the daughter of ' Blair Athol,' and in 1880, when 

 her owner, Mr. Whitmore Baker, then of Totnes, but 

 now of Paignton, Devon, began his experiments, she 

 was seven years old. She had been hunted in Devon- 

 shire for two seasons, and had been used as a hack 

 and also for drawing a four wheeled ' trap.' In 

 December 1880 Mr. Baker had the shoes removed, 

 and tried the experiment of allowing the animal 

 to do her work upon her own feet, without a pro- 

 tection of any kind. 



' I then rode the mare,' writes Mr. Baker, in 

 a letter addressed to the ' Field,' newspaper, ' when 

 snow and ice were on the ground last winter on 

 the roads in this neighbourhood, and in the town of 



