DOGS IN LONDON 253 



taken as evidence of its decadence — not of the 

 individual but of the race or breed or variety. 

 Whether this fact is known or only dimly surmised 

 by dog-lovers, more especially by those who set 

 the fashion in dogs, we see that in recent years 

 there has been a distinct reaction against the more 

 degenerate kinds ^ — those in whose natures the 

 jackal and wild-dog writing has quite or all but 

 faded out — the numerous small toy terriers ; the 

 Italian greyhound, shivering like an aspen leaf ; 

 the drawing - room pug, ugliest of man's (the 

 breeder's) many inventions ; the pathetic Blenheim 

 and King Charles spaniels, the Maltese, the 

 Pomeranian, and all the others that have, so to 

 speak, rubbed themselves out by acquiring a white 

 liver to please their owners' fantastic tastes. A 

 more vigorous beast is now in favour, and one of 

 the most popular is undoubtedly the fox-terrier. 

 This is assuredly the doggiest dog we possess, the 

 most aggressive, born to trouble as the sparks fly 

 upward. From my own point of view it is only 

 right that fox-terriers and all other good fighters 

 should have liberty to go out daily into the streets 

 in their thousands in search of shindies, to strive 

 with and worry one another to their hearts' content ; 



1 Alas ! since these notes were made, fourteen years ago, there has been 

 a recrudescence of the purely woman's drawing-room pet dog. The 

 wretched griffon, looking like a mean cheap copy of the little Yorkshire 



one of the few small pet animals which has not wholly lost its soul — 



appears to have vanished. But the country has now been flooded with 

 the Pekinese, and one is made to loathe it from the constant sight of it 

 in every drawing-room and railway carriage and motor-car and omnibus, 

 clasped in a woman's arms. 



