The Bull Terrier. 29 



" asbestos man," and of the " professor " who 

 dives into a tank from the top of the Westminster 

 Aquarium. But such dogs as these were not show 

 dogs, and, no doubt, shows really made the bull 

 terrier as he is to-day, and caused the almost total 

 extinction of any other bull terrier excepting the 

 white ones. Why white was eventually fixed upon 

 as the correct colour I have already surmised, and 

 as a rule modern specimens breed pretty truly to this 

 hue, though cases of a coloured mark on the eye or 

 on the ear crop up in nearly every litter. Usually 

 such dogs were destroyed at their birth, as being un- 

 fitted for success on the bench, though an instance 

 will be mentioned later on where a so-called patched 

 dog did a considerable amount of winning. 



To the late Mr. James Hinks, of Birmingham, a 

 noted dog-dealer, who died in 1878, we, in a great 

 measure, owe our present strain of bull terriers. 

 Somehow or other he contrived to get together a 

 strain of white dogs, specimens of which he ex- 

 hibited with great success at some of the earliest 

 shows, but the very earliest canine exhibitions did 

 not provide classes for bull terriers. 



It was early in the fifties that James Hinks began 

 to cross the patched, heavy-headed bull terrier, used 

 for fighting, with the English white terrier, and in due 

 time he produced dogs handsome enough to make a 



