The English White Terrier. 55 



and so in his early days he was a favourite with the 

 working man dog fancier of the large towns, who 

 showed him in the bar parlour, and believed him to 

 be the equal of any other dog in appearance. The 

 earliest illustrations of a terrier of this kind showed 

 him to be a white dog, with a coloured mark on his 

 body here and there ; and I should say that, until he 

 had been bred for some generations to produce him 

 pure white, there was seldom one born without 

 marks of some kind or other. Even now, dogs with 

 a coloured ear or a "patch " on some part of the 

 body or face are found in almost every litter. 



The most perfect specimens of the variety have 

 sprung from London and its suburbs, from Manchester 

 and other large manufacturing towns of Lancashire, 

 including Bolton and Rochdale ; whilst others were 

 to be found in Birmingham and the Black Country. 

 At some of our early dog shows there were large 

 classes of the English white terrier, sometimes the 

 entries reaching quite a score ; but the quality was 

 not uniformly good, as a tan ear or dark mark might 

 have been observed; and some of the specimens were 

 shaped more like an Italian greyhound than as a 

 terrier. The London and Birmingham shows usually 

 had the best entries, but I have seen excellent quality 

 further north at Belle Vue and Middleton, near 

 Manchester, and at some of the more local Lan- 



