THE DANDIE DINMONT TERRIER 479 



with Hugh Purvis, one of the few who had dogs direct from 

 Charlieshope, and assisted in keeping up the old breed, wrote to 

 the late Mr. Hugh Dalziel that Purvis more than once used a brindled 

 Bull-terrier to his Uandie Dinmont Terrier bitches. 



In speaking of dogs, the term " purity " must be used with 

 limitation ; there is no breed which we can prove to be absolutely 

 purely bred for any great length of time. What we term pure breeds 

 have been brought to their present state of high development by 

 careful selection and judicious crossings; and it should be quite 

 sufficient for us to know that there are hundreds of the variety now 

 living that are to all intents and purposes pure bred, in so far as 

 they have at least more or less of the blood of Dandie Dininont's 

 Mustards and Peppers, and have the recognised characteristics of 

 the breed so fixed in themselves as to be depended on to reproduce 

 the same with almost absolute faithfulness. 



At the date when the First Edition of this work was issued, 

 nearly all published facts relating to the history of the breed had 

 appeared in contributions to the controversies on the subject raised 

 from time to time in newspapers, and notably in the Field and 

 the Country. Since that date Mr. Charles Cook has produced his 

 monograph " The Dandie Dinmont Terrier : Its History and 

 Characteristics," in which the subject, in all its phases, is compre- 

 hensively and lucidly treated. Mr. Cook had the advantage of 

 consulting the kennel registry and other papers of the late Mr. E. 

 Bradshaw Smith, of Blackwood House, Ecclefechan, who was a 

 breeder of these Terriers for over forty years, and did more, 

 probably, than any other man to preserve the breed pure as it came 

 from James Davidson, of Hindlee, popularly ascribed to be the 

 original of Sir Walter Scott's Dandie Dinmont, of Charlieshope. 

 Sir Walter Scott himself, however, tells us in his Notes to " Guy 

 Mannering " that the character of Dandie Dinmont was drawn from 

 no individual. A dozen, at least, of stout Liddesdale yeomen with 

 whom he had been acquainted, and whose hospitality he had shared 

 in his rambles through that wild country, at a time when it was 

 totally inaccessible, save in the manner described by the author, might 

 lay claim to be the prototype of the rough but faithful, hospitable, 

 and generous farmer. Hindlee, it may be stated, was a wild farm 

 situate on the very edge of the Teviotdale Mountains, and border- 

 ing close on Liddesdale. As Mr. E. B. Smith took up the breed 

 within twenty years of the death of Mr. Davidson, whose Terriers 

 the novel of " Guy Mannering " had made famous, he would have 

 no difficulty in obtaining pure descendants of the original Peppers 

 and Mustards to form the foundations of his kennels. 



The class of Terrier kept by Davidson was common to the 

 Border districts, and was in the hands of some families of the 

 nomadic gipsies, famous among them being the Allans of Holystone, 



