302 British Dogs. 



pictures, and by the breed which the Duke of Beaufort, Treadwell, and 

 others preserved until quite recently. 



Now, having premised that wire-haired terriers have, or ought to have, 

 as good antecedents as their smooth brethren, it behoves us to look at 

 them as they are, and we shall find that while the smooth sort have for 

 many years excited the greatest interest, the rough one has languished in 

 comparative obscurity. Nay, at some shows, he has even been relegated to 

 the ranks of the " Non- Sporting Dogs " while the Kennel Club actually 

 made a retrograde movement at their show in 1879 by removing the wire- 

 haired division from the arbitrament of the fox terrier judges. 



All this is a base libel on the breed. A good wire-haired terrier is one 

 of the most sporting of all dogs ready for anything ; and though the 

 writer of this has given more attention to the smooth kind, he would be 

 the last to deny that, unless the smooth dog is of good and pure strain, 

 with plenty of coat, the rough one is the better sportsman of the two. 



It is, no doubt, a fact, that any breed of dogs that is vastly in fashion 

 runs a great danger, So many specimens become valuable merely for 

 their show qualifications that would otherwise have been knocked on the 

 head as rank curs or at least, never bred from. But, as it is, the unrea- 

 soning public breed indiscriminately from prize winners ; and, besides 

 that, certain sharp customers are for ever at work manufacturing what 

 they consider better sorts than the real article. Is it said a terrier's head 

 should be long; they go for assistance to the greyhound. He should 

 have lots of bone ; they obtain it from the beagle, and so on. Thus it 

 is that a great number of our smooth fox terriers are irritating brutes 

 without any idea of their work, or of hunting, which is a great point ; 

 for a terrier who is not a keen hunter, and does not lash an ever-busy 

 stern, either along a hedgerow or in cover, is not the right sort at all ; 

 while if he will give tongue on a scent so much the better. 



Avoiding, however, the mongrelised smooth dog, and sticking to good 

 old strains, we should say there is not twopence to choose between the 

 smooth and the wire-hair for work. It is submitted that a close, dense, 

 smooth coat will always turn wet better than one that is broken. 



On this point " Stonehenge " says: "The Fox Terrier Club descrip- 

 tion does not sufficiently, I think, insist on the thick and soft undercoat, 

 which should always be regarded as of great importance in resisting wet 

 and cold. An open long coat is even worse than a thick short one for 



