r three dogs are kept, table scraps will generally be
sufficient, but the pernicious habit of feeding at all times, and
giving sweets, pastry, and rich dainties, is most harmful, and must
produce disastrous results to the unfortunate animal. Two meals a day
at regular intervals are quite sufficient to keep these little pets in
the best condition, although puppies should be fed four times daily in
small quantities. After leaving the mother they will thrive better if
put on dry food, and a small portion of scraped or finely minced lean
meat given them every other day, alternately with a chopped hard-boiled
egg and stale bread-crumbs.

CHAPTER XLV

THE PEKINESE AND THE JAPANESE

Few of the many breeds of foreign dogs now established in England have
attained such a measure of popularity in so short a time as the
Pekinese. Of their early history little is known, beyond the fact that
at the looting of the Summer Palace of Pekin, in 1860, bronze effigies
of these dogs, known to be more than two thousand years old, were
found within the sacred precincts. The dogs were, and are to this day,
jealously guarded under the supervision of the Chief Eunuch of the
Court, and few have ever found their way into the outer world.

So far as the writer is aware, the history of the breed in England
dates from the importation in 1860 of five dogs taken from the Summer
Palace, where they had, no doubt, been forgotten on the flight of the
Court to the interior. Admiral Lord John Hay, who was present on
active service, gives a graphic account of the finding of these little
dogs in a part of the garden frequented by an aunt of the Emperor, who
had committed suicide on the approach of the Allied Forces. Lord John
and another naval officer, a cousin of the late Duchess of Richmond's,
each secured two dogs; the fifth was taken by General Dunne, who
presented it to Queen Victoria. Lord John took pains to ascertain that
none had found their way into the French camp, and he heard then that
the others had all been removed to Jehal with the Court. It is
therefore reasonable to suppose that these five were the only Palace
dogs, or Sacred Temple dogs of Pekin, which reached England, and it is
from the pair which lived to a respectable old age at Goodwood that so
many of the breed now in England trace their descent.

[Illustration: TOY DOGS 1. MISS STEVENS' TYPICAL JAPANESE PUPPY;
2. MRS. VALE NICOLAS'S POMERANIAN CH. THE SABLE MITE _Photograph