ANIMALS OF TO-DAY 133 



much information about a great variety of animals 

 written in a familiar and attractive style. 



In some chapters we are told how certain wild 

 animals have managed to maintain themselves 

 during the bad times of the nineteenth century ; 

 " their shifts and expedients, and personal idiosyn- 

 crasies, and instances of their survival under 

 difficulties. . . . Other chapters deal with the 

 wonderful progress of the domestic kinds." 



My own knowledge of animals being more or 

 less confined to the domestic cat, for which 

 animal I have at best but a moderate liking, and 

 at worst a very distinct aversion, I will quote a 

 few lines of what Mr. Cornish has to say about 

 them 



"The number of cats in London," he says (his 

 authority being the Daily Mail), " is four hundred 

 thousand." Surely that must be a very low 

 estimate; there must be more cats than dogs in 

 this vast metropolis, and yet I have seen it stated 

 that about a tenth of that number of dogs (say 

 forty thousand) is annually murdered by the 

 police, for no other crime than having shuffled 

 off their miserable muzzles ! Now, if it be allowed 

 that one-tenth of the dogs of London were 

 thus ruthlessly destroyed, it would bring the total 

 number of London dogs to the same number 

 as the cats ; but, after all, I leave the matter in 

 the competent hands of Mr. Cornish and the 

 Daily Mail correspondent, whose figures are 

 doubtless derived from actual counting of the 



