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 
