2OO British Dogs. 



because ignorance puts its veto on the dog doing exactly what he ought 

 to do. 



The colley is a dog of great spirit, and when he meets his peers, be it 

 at kirk, or market, or in the show ring, he gets his flag up, as much as to 

 say, " I'm as good a dog as any of you." And for this, forsooth, the 

 "inverted telescope " reviewers taboo the dog, and write him down as a 

 ring-tailed mongrel. No true colley carries his tail lying curled on his 

 back like a Pomeranian, but he should not trail it behind him like a 

 Llewellyn setter or the brush of a done-up fox. 



There has been an attempt made by recent writers to circumscribe the 

 national character of this dog by calling him the Highland colley, as though 

 he were peculiar to the north of Scotland. There appears to me to be 

 even less justification for this than for calling the old English black and 

 tan terrier the Manchester terrier, for Manchester has done something 

 special in making the modern black and tan terrier what he is ; but it is 

 not so in the case of the Highlands of Scotland and the colley, and this 

 dog is more properly described as the Scotch collie, even to the manner of 

 spelling the word. 



This dog is peculiarly Scotch, and as a pastoral dog originally more 

 intimately connected with the lowlands, where he is still, I consider, met 

 with pure in the greatest numbers, although now plentiful both in the 

 highlands of Scotland and the northern counties of England, and, indeed, 

 through the influence of dog shows and the rage for the breed in fashion- 

 able circles in London itself, where he always appears to me to have 

 wandered out of his latitude. 



The question of orthography may not be an important one, but I am 

 of opinion collie is correct, as I find Dr. Ogilvie, in his " Imperial 

 Dictionary," and Jameson, in his "Scottish Dictionary," both give that 

 form of spelling, and I think it is not improbable that collie is merely 

 the diminutive and familiar form of coll, as in all Scotch words the " ie " 

 is thus used, as Will becomes Willie, and Lass Lassie. Bewick, in his 

 " British Quadrupeds," indeed, had his own peculiar and original spelling 

 of the word, which was coaly pardonable in a book published in coaly 

 Newcastle. 



Of the moral and intellectual qualities of the dog a great deal of very 

 silly rubbish has been written. His intelligence is of such a high order 

 that it is not improved, but made ridiculous by the embellishments of those 



