164 BRITISH DOGS 



from hock downwards ; on the face the hair is shorter but still 

 rough, apparently about half the length or less of that on the legs, 

 but nothing like the short hair that gives comparative smoothness 

 to the face of the Rough Collie ; the ears drop like a Mastiff's, 

 are almost smooth, and if drawn towards the nose would not 

 reach more than two-thirds down the muzzle ; the tail appears to 

 have had about one-third of its natural length removed. 



Youatt gives a representation of an English Sheepdog with 

 a stump tail and a very pointed muzzle ; but the dog is shown 

 galloping down hill, and in such a position that his shape cannot 

 be judged of as the dog of Reinagle's drawing can. Youatt gives 

 no accurate detailed description, but merely says "he is com- 

 paratively a small dog," and that under conditions where strength 

 is needed " he is crossed with some larger dog." " Idstone " says 

 he considers the typical Old English Sheepdog to be " the blue 

 grizzled, rough-haired, large-limbed, surly, small-eared and small- 

 eyed, leggy, bobtail ed dog." 



It has been held that the docking of the tail generation after 

 generation resulted in pups being born tailless. Now, although 

 such a result might follow if the practice were continued long 

 enough, yet to attribute the cause to constant mutilation of the 

 parents seems controverted by the fact that the Bob-tailed Sheepdog 

 has other clearly marked features in common, which breeding 

 from the promiscuous herd of dogs docked to save a tax would 

 have dissipated rather than insured. 



There are some people who go so far as to say such a mutilation 

 as a docked tail represents can never become an inherited character. 

 The subject is admittedly a difficult one. " Carrier " (a gentleman 

 who wrote for many years over that nom de plume in the Field and 

 other papers) says it is impossible for any one who has read Darwin 

 to believe that a mutilation can become inherited. On the contrary, 

 it seems that evolution teaches that a disused member changes form, 

 and may be eventually dispensed with. It is puzzling, to say 

 the least, to account for Fox-terrier puppies having been whelped 

 with stump tails. So many instances of this during the last twenty 

 years have been recorded, that it is difficult to believe such cases 

 purely accidental, and influenced by no law of heredity. 



On the point of time required to influence such change, we 

 must not forget we may go far beyond the usual argument that 

 docking was a result of the tax in this country on undocked dogs, 

 for, so far into the past as the history of dogs clearly carries us, 

 docking was practised by shepherds, as vouched for by Columella. 

 The true reason for the practice of docking is to be found in the 

 general superstition, which for two thousand years has prevailed 

 among dog-owners, that the operation was a preventive of madness. 

 This idea pervaded the minds of shepherds and others in all 



