94 
A Defence of the Dog . 
[February, 
V. A DEFENCE OF THE DOG. 
By H. Bellyse Baildon. 
S HE dog has had his day ! The most versatile, intelli- 
gent, and faithful of animals, the comrade and ally of 
man from savagery to civilisation, has received sen- 
tence ; he is like the Caucasian, “ played out an invisible 
hand has written on the kennel, that his days are numbered, 
that he has been weighed in the balance and found wanting. 
He is not, indeed — desirable as that appears to be — to be 
exterminated by sweeping slaughter, to be proscribed at 
once for immediate execution. No ; but the u schoolmaster 
is abroad,” and slowly, but surely, man is to be educated 
into a contempt for his quondam companion until he reaches 
the point (the very nadir, alas ! of meanness) of giving his 
old friend the cut direct. On the altar of economy, science 
and civilisation, the victim is to be bound, and the sacrificing 
priest is to be none other than his old crony and accomplice. 
What a pathetic parting will it be between the last dog 
and the last master ; what infinite reproach in the silent, 
wistful back-look of the contemned servant ; what dumb, 
unspeakable shame in the heart of the regretful lord ! Then 
as the years go by, the memory of the extindt monsters 
will grow faint ; no record remaining of them, save their 
ghastly effigies on the dusty shelves of museums ; for we will 
surely be too much civilised to care to preserve such relics 
of a bygone superstition as the now-admired pictures of 
Landseer. Our posterity will wonderingly refer to their 
zoological text-books to discern what quadruped mammal it 
could be which recognised the returning Ulysses and died at 
his feet. And the Dryasdusts of the period will contend as 
to the true form of the skeleton of the member of the verte- 
brate kingdom who licked the sores of Lazarus. 
It is well that there are philosophical minds that can 
contemplate such a consummation with equanimity, not to 
say satisfaction. The present writer must confess that he 
has not yet attained the necessary intellectual altitude to 
enable him to regard the final separation of man and his 
immemorial associate in good and evil without a pang. 
Historically, pre-historically, and scientifically, to say no- 
thing of socially, economically, ethically, and psychologi- 
cally, the dog presents a subject of almost unique interest. 
