This was at Sway, a village near Lymington, A boy, mounted on a creaking old bike, was driving some cows to the Common, and had the greatest diffi culty in keeping on while following behind the lazy beasts on a rough track among the furze bushes: boy at a distance of ten little red dog, tongue out, looking as happy and proud as possible. As I pa: ed him he looked back at me as if to were that T had seen him and noted formed part of that important procession. On another day I went to the village and renewed my acquaintance with the little fellow and heard his history. Everybody him for his affectionate disposition and his value as a watch-dog by night, and I was told that his mother, now "dead, had been greatly prized, and was the smallest red dog ever seen in that part of Hampshire, Some day one of the thousand writers on "man's friend" will conceive the happy idea of a chapter or two on the dog—the universal cur—and he will then perhaps find it necessary to go abroad to study this well-marked dwarf variety, for with us he has fallen on evil days. There is no doubt that the muzz~ ling order profoundly affected the character of our dog population, since it went far towards the destruction of the cur and of mongrels—the races already imperilled by ance of the fox-terrier. after Mi. Long's campaign I came to the conclusion that here at all events the little red dog had been extirpated. He, with other varieties of the cur, was the dog of the poor, and when the muzzle deprived him of the power to fend for himself, he became a burden to his master. But I was mistaken; he is still with us, even here in London, though now very rare.
Text read from the printed page and cleaned; old type leaves the occasional error.