Barking Dogs. 139 
rence. It is difficult to get neighbours, themselves suffering 
from the affliction, to eome forward and prove the nuisance. 
No magistrate will listen to a complaint from one individual, 
or, at least, will utter some mild reproof, of which no notice 
whatever is taken. 
There is scarcely any part. of suburban London where this 
nuisance is not rampant, and a source of serious distress 
to brain workers, and of imminent danger to the sick. I had 
the misfortune some years ago to endure this kind of torture 
for two months, before it was possible to find out the owner, 
though the dog was kennelled not a hundred yards from my 
dwelling, owing to the irregular arrangement of the houses 
round a kind of “square,” with a private road ending in a 
cul de sac. He (the dog) was a half-bred Newfoundland with 
a tremendous voice, and had been brought to live near me 
soon after I had settled in my then abode. Having the 
curiosity to devote an hour to counting, I found that, in 
that time, he barked more than 300 times, and that was 
quite an average specimen of his capability of inflicting tor- 
ture, which continued with scarcely any intermission, day 
and night. It was probably the only kind of exercise the 
poor creature ever had, for he was never seen in the streets. 
For some reason, the immediate locality was infested by 
dogs. I identified twenty-one large and small individuals, 
living within a radius of. less than 150yds. of my afflicted 
ear, so that the chance of a single hour passing without a 
chorus started by one or other of these, was small indeed. 
Matters were complicated by the presence of seventeen cats 
(I counted so many sitting on the wall and roofs), plus 
two dogs, in the possession of a person of the female sex 
close at hand. The cats in their nocturnal peregrinations 
looked defiance to the dogs from the vantage ground of the 
walls, and then— 
At once arose so wild a yell, 
As all the fiends from ‘Heaven that fell 
Had pealed the banner-cry of Hell, 
