248 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 
As a naturalist I was interested in the muzzling 
order, and after noting its effects my interest in the 
subject has continued ever since. It should also, 
I imagine, be a matter of interest and importance 
to all who have a special regard for the dog or who 
are “devoted to dogs,’ who regard them as the 
“friends of man,” even holding with the canophilists 
of the old Youatt period of the last century that 
the dog was specially created to fill the place of 
man’s servant and companion. Strange to say, I 
have not yet met with any person of the dog-loving 
kind who has himself noticed any change in the 
temper or habits of the dog during the last fourteen 
or fifteen years or has any knowledge of it. One 
can only suppose—and this applies not only to 
those who cherish a peculiar affection for the dog, 
but to the numerous body of London naturalists 
as well—that the change was unmarked on account 
of the very long period during which the order was 
in force, when dogs were deprived of the power 
to bite, so that when the release came the former 
condition of things in the animal world was no 
longer distinctly remembered. It was doubtless 
assumed that, the muzzle once removed, all things 
were exactly as they had been before: if a few 
remembered and noticed the change, they failed 
to record it—at all events I have seen nothing 
about it in print. Circumstances made it impossible 
for me not to notice the immediate effect of the 
order, and at the end of the time to forget the state 
of things as they existed before its imposition. 
