time was called he would
start to his feet and limp slowly across glaring steadily at his
adversary; then, as he got nearer, he would quicken his pace, make a
savage rush, and in a moment they would be locked in combat. So they
battled on for fifty-six minutes, till the white dog (who was apparently
having all the best of it), on being called to cross the ring, only went
half-way across and stood there for a minute growling savagely. So he
lost the fight.

No doubt it was a brutal exhibition. But it was not cruel to the animals
in the same sense that pigeon-shooting or hare-hunting is cruel. The
dogs are born fighters, anxious and eager to fight, desiring nothing
better. Whatever limited intelligence they have is all directed to
this one consuming passion. They could stop when they liked, but anyone
looking on could see that they gloried in the combat. Fighting is like
breath to them--they must have it. Nature has implanted in all animals a
fighting instinct for the weeding out of the physically unfit, and these
dogs have an extra share of that fighting instinct.

Of course, now that militarism is going to be abolished, and the
world is going to be so good and teetotal, and only fight in debating
societies, these nasty savage animals will be out of date. We will not
be allowed to keep anything more quarrelsome than a poodle--and a man
of the future, the New Man, whose fighting instincts have not been
quite bred out of him, will, perhaps, be found at grey dawn of a Sunday
morning with a crowd of other unregenerates in some backyard frantically
cheering two of them to mortal combat.

HIS MASTERPIECE

Greenhide Billy was a stockman on a Clarence River cattle-station, and
admittedly the biggest liar in the district. He had been for many years
pioneering in the Northern Territory, the other side of the sun-down--a
regular "furthest-out man"--and this assured his reputation among
station-hands who award rank according to amount of experience.

Young men who have always hung around the home districts, doing a job of
shearing here or a turn at horse-breaking there, look with reverence
on Riverine or Macquarie-River shearers who come in with tales of runs
where they have 300,000 acres of freehold land and shear 250,000
sheep; these again pale their ineffectual fires before the glory of the
Northern Territory man who has all-comers on toast, because no one can
contradict him or check his figures. When two of them mee