, and bone meal ought only to be regarded as occasional
additions to the usual meat diet, and are not necessary when dog cakes
are regularly supplied. Well-boiled green vegetables, such as cabbage,
turnip-tops, and nettle-tops, are good mixed with the meat; potatoes
are questionable. Of the various advertised dog foods, many of which
are excellent, the choice may be left to those who are fond of
experiment, or who seek for convenient substitutes for the
old-fashioned and wholesome diet of the household. Sickly dogs require
invalid's treatment; but the best course is usually the simplest, and,
given a sound constitution to begin with, any dog ought to thrive if
he is only properly housed, carefully fed, and gets abundant exercise.

CHAPTER L

BREEDING AND WHELPING

The modern practice of dog-breeding in Great Britain has reached a
condition which may be esteemed as an art. At no other time, and in no
other country, have the various canine types been kept more rigidly
distinct or brought to a higher level of perfection. Formerly
dog-owners--apart from the keepers of packs of hounds--paid scant
attention to the differentiation of breeds and the conservation of
type, and they considered it no serious breach of duty to ignore the
principles of scientific selection, and thus contribute to the
multiplication of mongrels. Discriminate breeding was rare, and if a
Bulldog should mate himself with a Greyhound, or a Spaniel with a
Terrier, the alliance was regarded merely as an inconvenience. So
careless were owners in preventing the promiscuous mingling of alien
breeds that it is little short of surprising so many of our canine
types have been preserved in their integrity.

The elimination of the nondescript cur is no doubt largely due to the
work of the homes for lost dogs that are instituted in most of our
great towns. Every year some 26,000 homeless and ownerless canines are
picked up by the police in the streets of London, and during the
forty-seven years which have elapsed since the Dogs' Home at Battersea
was established, upwards of 800,000 dogs have passed through the
books, a few to be reclaimed or bought, the great majority to be put
to death. A very large proportion of these have been veritable
mongrels, not worth the value of their licences--diseased and maimed
curs, or bitches in whelp, turned ruthlessly adrift to be consigned to
the oblivion of the lethal chamber, where the thoroughbred seldom
finds its w