of pay, at least-may help himself, as he passes, to a double handful of flour or sweetmeats or tobacco, to meet his immediate requirements, without thought, or word, on either side of payment; but the dogs have no such privilege. The principle of heredity surely is inherent in castigation as in other matters. Time out of mind, in Hàrùnu 'r Rashid's city, the first glance of a dog's eye towards forbidden dainties has been visited with the swift descent on him of a cudgel or a hatchet. Depend upon it, there is nothing like discipline, especially discipline proceeding from a whole community, and exercised upon another whole community; in rude times through the argumentum ad baculum, and, later, through the force of public opinion. Ever since the time of the Patriarch Noah-with the Arabs 'Nùh'-as perhaps before it, the dogs of Baghdad have stood very high indeed among the lawabiding communities of the world. Not only have they been taught in each succeeding generation to keep the eighth commandment, but in another important particular they are exemplary. Heaven protect the crates, or bags, of comestibles which are exposed at the doors of the greengrocers and the fruiterers of these islands! Every dog that passes may, if it please him, irrigate them as Gulliver did the burning palace of Lilliput. But if a Baghdad dog were to be guilty of such a misdemeanour, condign punishment, on the Lynch law principle, would be meted out to him on the instant. On one of a series of marches parallel with the Euphrates, I chanced to meet a desert horde whose greyhounds are in high repute. Buying a brace of saplings, I took them on with me, lodging them in the tent, and doing everything that was possible to make them feel at home. Surprising to relate, they obstinately refused both food and water. The remains of a venison pasty seemed at once to attract and to repel them. A pan of water appealed to them even more strongly, but they would not go up to it. After a time a Persian muleteer explained the mystery in a twinkling. No sooner did he upset the water and toss the viands on the ground before them than the silky-eared ones ran in like Trojans, and made up in a few moments for a day's fasting. Accustomed to lap from the river, from irrigational channels, and from sheets of surface water, and reared among people who do not use tables, they had been taught by many a buffet to keep their noses out of cooking-pots and vessels of every description. Use, it is commonly said, is second nature, but in this connection it has to be remembered that to eat and drink from receptacles is even in the human animal a habit that waits on civilisation.

III. CONSERVANCY

There is a good old story current of a midshipman who, when sent up a creek by his captain to report on the manners and customs of the natives, put it all into these four words: Manners none; Arabic form of 'Haroun el Raschid,' meaning' Aaron, the straight,' i.e. orthodox,

just, &c.

customs beastly.' Non cuivis homini contingit adire Corinthum. No mere landsman can come within a measurable distance of such a piece of nautical tautness; but the manners, such as they are, of the Baghdad Canida having now been described, as is hoped not too diffusely, it remains to notice with equal brevity some of their customs -a subject, sooth to say, not over-nice to handle, except in so far as it is no sin for a dog, any more than for a man, to 'labour in his vocation.' If one or more of the premier nations were to commission a body of representative bacteriologists and other illuminati to found a colony in which, according to the very newest theories, all the conditions most favourable at once to the genesis, the maturation, and the diffusion of zymotic diseases should be present, they could scarcely make a more ideal centre of the kind imagined than that which lies ready to their hand in the Tigris city. The Americans would say of the climate that it consists of 'samples.' From June to August the heavens are like brass, save when the sandstorm hurtles through the sky, driven by the south-eastern sirocco. At noon the thermometer may stand at 120° Fahr. in verandahs. From soon after sunrise to sunset the well-to-do classes carry on their occupations, and indulge in long siestas, in cellars as damp and dark as charnel-houses. In winter the temperature occasionally falls below freezing-point, heavy rains set in at intervals, and the uneven streets tend to lose themselves in mud-pits and in pools of green and slimy water. Never since the Ark was floated have human beings laid themselves down in closer proximity with the mare and the camel, the milch buffalo and the donkey. The house interiors are wholly dependent on hand carriage for the replenishing of the water-jars. The domestic cloaca are constructed on a principle requiring no plumbers which probably was known to the Old Testament prophets one of whom, Ezra, has his tomb on the Tigris some way below Baghdad. Wells are few and far between. Man and beast alike drink of the great river, which also forms the arterial common sewer of the city; the place where clothes are washed; and the 'Stygian wave' into which is dragged every beast of burden when it is not left to lie where it has fallen. As for the Tigris, its channel where it divides modern Baghdad into two segments is about as broad as that of the Thames at Westminster. On either side substantial dwellings, mosques, and other buildings open on it, or overhang it. In spring, when the snow is loosening its hold of the Armenian and Kurdi mountain-sides, the swollen current runs from bank to bank; but at most seasons a gradual shrinkage is in progress. If all be true that is told us, the muddy bottom, with the water ever receding, the exposed surfaces thick with impurities, and the tropical sun sucking up all the infections,' must be a regular hotbed of miasma and pestilence. And yet, mirabile dictu, Baghdad is not, as Eastern cities go, unhealthy. In the absence of regula

5

5 The Tempest, Act ii., sc. 2.

statistics, it is necessary to be guarded; but it is at least certain that for about three-quarters of a century the plague, now so deeply rooted in our own Bombay, has spared it absolutely; and that although it has several times been visited by cholera, the mortality from this cause has fallen short of rather than exceeded the ratio to which India is accustomed.

6

The connection between all this and the subject proper is near at hand. Let the reader only imagine to himself what the Baghdad of the foregoing slight description would be like without the dogs that scavenge it. What Mesopotamia' is in pulpit oratory, 'vehicular traffic' is in all cautionary notices proceeding from corporations; but where the streets are so narrow that two horsemen can hardly pass without touching, and the slightest rumble will disturb the foundations of venerable buildings, city fathers are saved from the temptation of using grand words to stop carriages. To come to the point, Baghdad has no conservancy carts, or, at least, had none in my day, to carry its sweets hither and thither, send them flying in at people's windows, and deposit them in the suburban 'breathingplaces.' Refuse animal and vegetable matter is largely disposed of by the dogs, in situ; while the mere street sweepings find their way into the furnaces of the public bath-keepers, who, if restricted to fuels sanctioned by savants, would have to raise their charges far above the reach of the wayfaring and perspiring classes. It certainly is horrid to watch some grey-muzzled veteran

Or bob-tail tyke, or trundle-tail,

who, because he is such a beast,' has secured, so to speak, the corner table, licking his chops over a feast of fat things. It is also shocking to think of such packs of ragamuffins that they can claim kindred with our own Waterloo Cup candidates and flat-coated retrievers, which, wherever they appear, command so much admiration. But, after all, is not the bed rock identical throughout the canine world? Does not the daintiest Skye terrier that ever took his carriage-airings seated on a cushion as vis-à-vis to a 'lady of quality' rub himself with infinitely greater gusto on a piece of carrion than on a bundle of the sweetest meadow hay? Nay, is it not so probable as to be almost certain that the noble Alpine mastiffs whose exploits are so famous, when they scrape the snow from dead or dying travellers, are impelled thereto by the self-same instinct as that which teaches their Eastern cousins to turn up the sand-drift over the remains of the fallen mule or camel? An instinct, we all know, can no more be created than it can be eradicated-' Naturam expellas furca, tamen

"The country between the rivers' (a purely geographical expression introduced by the Greeks about the time of Alexander) from the points where the Euphrates and the Tigris break through the Taurus range to, in the south, the so-called 'Median Wall '; where the same rivers, approaching each other, to diverge lower down, enter the rich alluvium of Babylonia, near Hit, the ancient Is.

7 King Lear, Act III., sc. 6.

usque recurret'—but we also know that one and the same instinct admits of being directed into ever so many different channels by means of education.

IV

8

Like the Irish post-boy's 'trot for the avenue,' a special representation has been reserved for the finish. It was stated at the outset that a notable fact of canine natural history would be brought forward in the sequel; and this is the proper place for it. During a residence of ten years-1882-92-in Baghdad, as H.M.'s ConsulGeneral, I never saw or heard of a case of madness in the dog; and on inquiry it transpired that the oldest inhabitant,' equally with the surgeon-major of the Bombay army who during many years had been attached as medical officer to the consulate, had the same story to tell. This fact seemed so remarkable as to deserve mention in a work on Arabian topics which I brought out later; and the hope was that some of the authorities who are interested in the subjects of rabies and hydrophobia would notice the reference. It is, of course, possible that during the years that have passed since 1892-' alas ! how time escapes,' as Cowper says-cases of rabies have occurred on the Tigris; but, even so, the long antecedent period of immunity is not to be forgotten. All that will here be attempted is to note down a few facts, the task of drawing inferences being left to the scientific. Speaking, firstly, of the risks of the disease being imported, not only is the desert round Baghdad the habitat of the wolf, the fox, and the jackal, but there are few parts of the world, between London and Hong Kong, from which pet dogs are not brought occasionally by military officers of the Osmanli, by consuls, and by travellers. In ten years I saw two packs of foxhounds imported to Baghdad from England, besides a goodly number of German boarhounds, Dandie Dinmonts, and dogs of other nationalities. And then, with regard to the self-development of rabies, if the possibility of such a thing apart from bites be granted, the conditions of canine existence in Baghdad are as above glanced at. The extremes of tropical, or sub-tropical, heat can, it is evident, be experienced without madness appearing, though what the effect would be were access to the Tigris at the same time wanting is a point only determinable by experiment. Precisely the same remark is applicable to the habit of preying upon offal; and, indeed, one rather common, if somewhat random, theory is, that a free supply of this the natural food of the dog, together with an open-air life, and the complete absence of restriction on acts of reproduction, is not altogether unconnected with the exemption which the dogs of Baghdad would appear to enjoy from the greatest curse of their species.

8

W. TWEEDIE.

The Arabian Horse: His Country and People. Messrs. William Blackwood & Sons: 1894.

JAPANESE EDUCATION

IN Japanese schools, when masters and pupils assemble in the hall of the school, at the beginning of a school session or term, to celebrate the New Year's day or other fête days, on Commemoration days and on Graduation days, in fact in all school functions, and likewise in many other functions connected with education, it is usual to commence the proceedings with the reading of the Imperial Rescript on Education. This is no empty ceremony; the reader, who is usually the principal, feels that he is giving the living words of his Majesty the Emperor; the assembly stands up, and when the reading is over, all bow in profound reverence, as if they had been delivered by the Emperor in person. A copy of this Rescript is distributed from the Department of Education to every school in the Empire, whether established and maintained by the central government, local governments, or by private individuals or corporations; those for the central government schools being actually signed by the Emperor. This copy of the Rescript, together with the photographic portraits of the Emperor and the Empress, which are distributed on application from the Imperial household to all schools above the higher primary grade maintained by the central or local governments, are kept in a special place in the school and carefully guarded. There have been instances when the principal or a teacher of a school saved them at the risk of his life from the flames, when the school-house was burnt down by conflagration; such deeds are not officially encouraged, but there can be no doubt that they make most profound impression on the minds of children.

I think I cannot do better in this Inaugural Address to the course of lectures on Japanese Education than say something about this Rescript, and explain the circumstances leading to its issue in 1890, little more than sixteen years ago.

I shall begin with the translation, which I may say has been made specially for this course of lectures. One of the first things I did, when I accepted the invitation of the University of London to lecture before an English audience on Japanese education, was to look out for a good English translation of the Rescript. There were