DOG-STORIES.
[To 7WZ EDITOR Or THE " SPECTATOR:9 SIR,—A lady friend of mine has a wonderful collie-dog,. named 'Doctor.' It had for sole animal companion in a. suburban London garden a hedgepig, for which it (not unnaturally) entertained no great affection. One day a son of the household, devoted to biology, had brought home the skin of another hedgepig for research purposes. It had been. left out in the garden while the boy was absent from home. His mother, going out one evening at dusk, saw the skin of this animal lying on the grass, and remarked to a friend who was then in the garden : " Doctor ' has been very bad. He has killed the hedgepig !" In an instant the dog was con.- fronted with the skin of the dead creature, and addressed by every opprobrious epithet,—" Naughty dog," "Bad, brutal dog," "Murderous dog," &c. It did its very best to explain the situation by leaping up on its mistress, and trying to exonerate itself from an unfounded charge. Bat its nose was pressed down close to the skin of the dead animal, and words of severest condemnation were continued and augmented. At last the collie came up to its mistress, and, seizing the skirt of her dress in its mouth, dragged her up to the box, in which his garden companion (but not his friend) was quietly housed, that she might see whether it was alive or not ! The hedge- pig was there alive as ever, and, after having proved hie. innocence, as the suspected murderer of an alien animal, 'Doctor' bounded gleesomely through the garden, feeling that he had been a wrongly accused, but a quite innocent,
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