As I have warned America against our English tricks, I wish to warn England also against American wiles, even at the expense of showing myself to be one of the ideal "flats " which dealers pray heaven to put in their paths. But the benefit of my experience is the best gift I can give my readers.

I have come across honourable Americans with whom it was a pleasure to have business relations, and alas, I have also had the misfortune to meet with sharpers who beat our own by a long way. Several times it has happened to me to send over dogs and get a distressful letter from my buyer saying some dreadful accident had happened to them, working on my feelings so that I sent him out other dogs as free gifts to make up the loss. Later on I have found that these supposed dead dogs were alive and had become big winners under other names.

In another case a woman asked me to let her pay by instalments as she was very poor. On receiving the dog she wrote me effusive thanks, and soon afterwards announced the birth of some good puppies. Later on she refused to pay on the ground that the dog was a non-stockgetter! Other dealers have got dogs from me on various false pretences and have never failed to add insult and calumny to swindling and injury.

To go back to the show ring. A man who keeps and breeds ugly specimens himself is not suitable as a judge because he is accustomed to bad points and his eye gets spoilt In order to be a good judge it is necessary to have a well-trained eye and a decided character.

Judging requires a clear head and great firmness of mind. Decision can only be attained by knowing one's own mind. It is no use judging if you have no mind to know and are swayed by every whisper at the ringside. Don't be influenced by what other people may think of you. I once saw a splendid bit of judging at a horse show. There were two tandems, one belonging to a popular exhibitor and the other to an outsider. The outsider's turn was obviously the best. His horses were better movers and better matched, but the crowd began hissing him and cheering their favourite.

The judge paid no attention whatever and gave first to the outsider. The crowd roared and hooted and the beaten team drove furiously round and round the ring, cheered to the echo; the winner was mobbed, and the loser refused to leave the ring till the police interfered.

I have always remembered that bit of judging, and make up my mind that if ever I had to judge myself I would never allow myself to be influenced by ring-siders. In justice to the dog fancy, however, I must say that one of the worst exhibitions of "bad form" I ever came across was at a horse show, not a dog show. In this case the judge had entered his own horse, not for competition, and had it brought out into the judging ring, where he declaimed on its merits (which by the way were very scanty) to all the bystanders, and after pointing out the excessive inferiority of all the exhibits compared to his own horse, astonished the whole show by his awards. I may add that the judge had competed the previous year with his marvellous horse and had been unplaced. Novice judges should try not to be ridiculously puffed up with their own importance. Before they can lay claim to any respect or admiration they must prove their competence, and all they generally do on a first appearance is to prove their incompetence. Novices are usually like mirrors reflecting the last thing that has been put before them without any stable image of their own, or like water which is blown into ripples by every breeze.

They are unconsciously biased by everything they hear, but are generally much too hopelessly confused in the ring to carry out much of what they go in intending to do. They find it very difficult to recognise the dogs, therefore if a novice begins by putting your dog back you will often change your luck by changing your handler, as ten to one the judge will not know the dog again in different hands. Exhibitors have to reckon with many kinds of judges.

1. The weak-minded, well-meaning man, who never can make up his mind and gets hot and flustered and nervous, and makes the exhibitors cross and takes all the life out of the exhibits by having them lifted up and down and sent round and round the ring fifty times where once would suffice. This kind of judge almost invariably ends by awarding the prizes to the wrong dogs because, by looking at them too long, he loses the invaluable general impression of shape, style, and outline, and eventually makes his decision on questions of minute detail, which are thus given an importance beyond their actual value. Looking too long and too closely at a thing is a bad system as it tends to destroy all sense of proportion. I once saw an old gentleman come into a picture gallery. He did not look at the pictures in the ordinary way, but examined several canvases with a magnifying glass. Some judges seem to judge dogs much in the same way.

2. The old hand who is open to alter his decisions, according to the advantage he thinks he is likely to get, either in hard cash or in other ways,

3. The equally old hand who has a kink in his temper, who will put you up to-day and down to-morrow, out of pure spleen and biliousness, who is insulted if he is bribed and more insulted if he is not.

4. The sensationalist, who likes to turn everything topsy turvy.

5. The ostentatious and self-righteous prig who is always blowing his own trumpet.

6. The rare judge, who knows his business, who is firm, courteous, and dignified in the ring, and punctual in getting there, who is rapid and decided in his awards, and perfectly consistent and reliable.

7. The jovial, happy-go-lucky man, who is always late, arrives in breathless haste, with a flushed face and eager eye and has to catch an early train home. He hurries through his classes, loses his pencil, mislays his judging book, awards the stud dog prize to a bitch, gives the Pomeranian championship to a Pug, and the open challenge cup to a litter, addresses the secretary as "My lad," shakes hands with total strangers, thanks everybody profusely, and vanishes in a whirl of flurry, taking the slips of the last class with him, and leaving everybody bewildered and gasping.

8. The bully who swears at the ring steward, insults the secretary, orders the exhibitors out of the ring if they dare so much as to sneeze without leave, frightens the dogs, reduces novices to hysterics, awards the prizes to the right dogs, and departs saying he never saw such a cussed lot of wastrels in his life.