One day I found him in, and after we had looked for about a minute at each other, I squatting before the kennel, he with chin on paws pretending to be looking through me at something beyond, I addressed a few kind words to him, which he received with the before-mentioned growl. I pronounced him a surly brute and went away. It was growl for growl. Nevertheless I was well pleased at having escaped the consequences in speaking kindly to him. I am not a "doggy" person nor even a canophilist. The purely parasitic or degenerate pet dog moves me to compassion, but the natural vigorous outdoor dog I fear and avoid because we are not in harmony; consequently I suffer and am a loser when he forces his company on me. The outdoor world I live in is not the one to which a man goes for a constitutional, with a dog to save him from feeling lonely, or, if he has a gun, with a dog to help him kill something. It is a world which has sound in it, distant cries and penetrative calls, and low mysterious notes, as of insects and corncrakes, and frogs chirping and of grasshopper warblers--sounds like wind in the dry sedges. And there are also sweet and beautiful songs; but it is very quiet world where creatures move about subtly, on wings, on polished scales, on softly padded feet--rabbits, foxes, stoats, weasels, and voles and birds and lizards and adders and slow-worms, also beetles and dragon-flies. Many are at enmity with each other, but on account of their quietude there is no disturbance, no outcry and rushing into hiding. And having acquired this habit from them I am able to see and be with them. The sitting bird, the frolicking rabbit, the basking adder--they are as little disturbed at my presence as the butterfly that drops down close to my feet to sun his wings on a leaf or frond and makes me hold my breath at the sight of his divine colour, as if he had just fluttered down from some brighter realm in the sky. Think of a dog in this world, intoxicated with the odours of so many wild creatures, dashing and splashing through bogs and bushes! It is ten times worse than a bull in a china-shop. The bull can but smash a lot of objects made of baked clay; the dog introduces a mad panic in a world of living intelligent beings, a fairy realm of exquisite beauty. They scuttle away and vanish into hiding as if a deadly wind had blown over the earth and swept them out of existence. Only the birds remain--they can fly and do not fear for their own lives, but are in a state of intense anxiety about their eggs and young among the bushes which he is dashing through or exploring.