DOGS IN LONDON 268 



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 till 

 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, 



