DOGS IN LONDON 263 
muzzling days. The object of that order we have 
seen was gained in the brief period of thirty months. 
Hydrophobia for the first time in the annals of 
England had ceased to exist, and so long as the 
quarantine law is faithfully observed will perhaps 
never return. Rabies broke out again in _ this 
country in 1917, its first reappearance since 1897, 
owing to some person having succeeded in eluding 
the quarantine order and bringing an infected dog 
to Plymouth. From that centre it spread to 
other parts of Devon and to Cornwall, and 
despite the prompt action of the authorities in 
imposing a new muzzling order in these two 
counties, the infection has spread to other parts 
of the country, and new muzzling orders are 
being issued just now— April 1919. Up tll 
the year of 1897 the average number of persons 
who perished annually as the result of a dog - bite 
was twenty-nine. “ Well, that’s not many in a 
population of forty millions,” cried the canophilists; 
but for twenty-nine who actually died of dog- 
madness, the most horrible shape in which death 
can appear to a human being, there were hundreds, 
and probably thousands, every year who lived for 
weeks and months in a constant state of appre- 
hension lest some slight bite or abrasion received 
from the tooth of an angry or playful dog should 
result in that frightful malady. 
This was unquestionably a great, a very great 
gain; but Mr. Long had builded better than he 
knew, and I am not sure that the accidental result, 
