The Skye Terrier. 303 



(< Stonehenge," in his " Dogs of the British Isles," 

 simplify matters much. He might have done so 

 for he knew well enough the difference between 

 the two varieties, but his coadjutors in the article 

 followed the line of complication, and we were 

 no better off than before, so far as our know- 

 ledge of the Skye terrier was concerned. That its 

 name as such is of comparatively modern origin I 

 have no doubt whatever, but I have doubts as to the 

 truthfulness of the story which ascribes the original 

 Skye terrier as the result of a mesalliance between 

 the native dogs of the Western isles and some 

 " Spanish white dogs which were wrecked on the 

 Island of Skye at the time when the Spanish Armada 

 lost so many ships on the western coast." 



Ever since the terrier of which I write has had an 

 identity of its own, the coat which covered it was 

 long, even shaggy, but not to the same extent as is 

 seen on the bench winners of the present day. How 

 he first came to have that coat there is not a particle 

 of reliable evidence to be found. Maybe it was 

 natural, as the mountains and lochs are to the island 

 the name of which it bears ; maybe it, like Topsy, 

 " growed." Anyhow, here is the strain which 

 is as distinct from that of the ordinary hard- 

 haired Scottish terrier as a Pekin duck is from a 

 Rouen. That they were able to hunt and kill 



