THE LITTLE RED DOG 245 
boy, mounted on a creaking old bike, was driving 
some cows to the common, and had the greatest 
difficulty in keeping on while following behind the 
lazy beasts on a rough track among the furze 
bushes; and behind the boy at a distance of ten 
yards trotted the little red dog, tongue out, looking 
as happy and proud as possible. As I passed him 
he looked back at me as if to make sure that I had 
seen him and noted that he formed part of that 
important procession. On another day I went to 
the village and renewed my acquaintance with the 
little fellow and heard his history. Everybody 
praised him for his affectionate disposition and his 
value as a watch-dog by night, and I was told that 
his mother, now dead, had been greatly prized, 
and was the smallest red dog ever seen in that part 
of Hampshire. 
Some day one of the thousand writers on “ man’s 
friend ” will conceive the happy idea of a chapter 
or two on the dog—the universal cur—and he will 
then perhaps find it necessary to go abroad to 
study this well-marked dwarf variety, for with us 
he has fallen on evil days. There is no doubt that 
the muzzling order profoundly affected the char- 
acter of our dog population, since it went far 
towards the destruction of the cur and of mongrels 
—the races already imperilled by the extraordinary 
predominance of the fox-terrier. The change was 
most marked in the metropolis, and after Mr. 
Long’s campaign I came to the conclusion that 
here at all events the little red dog had been 
