250 THE BOOK OF A NATURALIST 



movements and sent them away with a kick and 

 a curse whenever he got the chance. Most, if not 

 all, of these poor dogs had owners who gave them 

 shelter but no food or very little, and probably in 

 most cases succeeded in evading the licence duty. 



There is no doubt that in the past the dog 

 population of London was always largely composed 

 of animals of this kind — " curs of low degree," and 

 a great variety of mongrels, mostly living on their 

 wits. An account of the dogs of London of two or 

 three or four centuries ago would have an extra- 

 ordinary interest for us now, but, unfortunately, 

 no person took the pains to write it, Caius, our 

 oldest writer on dogs, says of " curres of the 

 mungrel and rascall sort " — the very animals we 

 want to know about : "Of such dogs as keep not 

 their kind, of such as are mingled out of sundry 

 sortes not imitating the conditions of some one 

 certaine Spece, because they resemble no notable 

 shape, nor exercise any worthy property of the true, 

 perfect, and gentle kind, it is not necesarye that 

 I write any more of them, but to banish them as 

 unprofitable implements out of the boundes of my 

 Booke." It is regrettable that he did " banish " 

 them, as he appears to have been something of an 

 observer on his own account. Had he given us a 

 few pages on the life and habits of the " rascall 

 sort " of animal, his Booke of Englishe Dogges, 

 which after so many centuries is still occasionally 

 reprinted, would have been as valuable to us now 

 as Turner's on British birds (1544) and Willughby's 



