The Skye Terrier. 335 



They have, in correspondence which has been dragged through 

 numerous newspapers, insisted that the dogs obtaining prizes at English 

 dog shows have coats of soft silky texture. To make this statement is to 

 show gross ignorance of facts, or wilfully to write that which is untrue. 

 A dog with a soft silky coat, or of " Berlin wool " texture, may occa- 

 sionally have won, judges not being infallible ; but to say that English 

 judges, by preferring soft-coated Syke terriers encourage mongrels, is 

 altogether unsustainable by facts, and soft silky-coated dogs are now but 

 rarely seen in a Skye terrier class. In June, 1879, I acted as judge at 

 Exeter show, when, to my astonishment, there was a class of some ten or 

 twelve, and every one hard-coated, and when we come to the principal 

 prize winners at all good shows it is the same. Her Majesty the 

 Queen's Toddy, Gretton's Sam, Pratt* s Piper, Haggis, and others of his 

 kennel, Brooke's Warlock, Pike's Oscar, Cunningham's Monarch and 

 Venus, Locke's Perkie, and many more I could name are all remarkable 

 for the hardness of the exterior coat. 



Another objection taken to the prize winners is the length of the coat. 



Prize winning Skye terriers in England are not regularly worked, and 

 some of them not at all ; if they were, every practical man knows their 

 coats would soon be short enough ; but the issuers of the manifesto I am 

 about to quote insist that the length of coat could not be attained 

 without crossing with a naturally longer haired variety. In this they 

 answer themselves by stating that the Eoseneath strain has a coat two- 

 thirds longer than the original, and say this result has been obtained by 

 " systematic breeding by selection." Just so the dogs prized in England 

 may have obtained their long coats, and with prize dogs there have been 

 other influences at work tending to the production of long coats the 

 constant attention to combing and brushing alone stimulates and 

 increases the growth of hair, and attention to health and cleanliness 

 keeps the dogs from scratching and breaking the hair. When the reader 

 comes to Mr. John Flinn's able contribution, he will, however, find that 

 although short-coated terriers may long have existed in the Western 

 Highlands, very long-coated terriers were peculiar to these parts over 

 300 years ago. 



Another objection taken to prize dogs, and strongly urged by the party 

 I am now referring to, is that their owners give no account of their 

 pedigree, or how or from whom they originally obtained the strain. 



