Mr. Smith avers with obvious satisfaction that in Liege twice as many draught dogs as horses are seen in the streets, attached to vehicles. He regards “a gaily painted cart” drawn by “a well fed dog” and driven by a well fed (and gaily painted) woman as a “pleasing vision.” I do not; I should prefer to see the dog sitting at the receipt of steaks and chops and the lady devoting herself to the amelioration of the condition of the universe and the manufacture of poetry and stories that are not true. A more pleasing vision, too, one endeared to eye and heart by immemorial use and wont, is that of stranger and dog indulging in the pleasures of the chase—stranger a little ahead—while the woman in the case manifests a characteristically compassionate solicitude lest the gentleman’s trousers do not match Fido’s mustache. It is, indeed, impossible to regard with any degree of approval the degradation to commercial utility of two so noble animals as Dog and Woman; and if Man had joined them together by driving-reins I should hope that God would put them asunder, even if the reins were held by Dog. There would no doubt be a distinct gain as well as a certain artistic fitness in unyoking the strong-minded female of our species from the chariot of progress and yoking her to the apple-cart or fish-wagon, but imminence of the draughtwoman is not foreshadowed in the report of our consul at Liege. Mr. Smith’s estimate of the number of dogs in this country at seven millions is a moderate one, it must be confessed, and can hardly have been based on observations by moonlight in a suburban village; his estimate of the effective strength of the average dog at five hundred pounds is probably about right, as will be attested by any intelligent boy who in a campaign against an orchard has experienced detention by the Cerberus of the place. Taking his own figures, Mr. Smith calculates that we have in this country three-and-a-half billion pounds of “idle dog power.” But this statement is more ingenious than ingenuous; it gives, as doubtless it was intended to give, the impression that we have only idle dogs, whereas of all mundane forces the domestic dog is most easily stirred to action. His expense of energy in pursuit of the harmless, necessary flea, for example, is prodigious; and he is not infrequently seen in chase of his own tail, with an activity scarcely inferior. If there is anything worth while in accepted theories of the conversion and conservation of force these gigantic energies are by no means wasted; they reappear as heat, light and electricity, modifying climate, reducing gas bills and assisting in propulsion of street cars. Even in baying the moon and terrifying visitors and bypassers, the dog releases a certain amount of vibratory force which through various mutations of its wave-length may do its part in cooking a steak or gratifying the olfactory nerve by throwing fresh perfume on the violet.