382 Modern Dogs. 



made it an impossibility to work him in company 

 with other dogs. Rabbits or rats might surround 

 him, but such small vermin would be totally 

 neglected if there were a dog within sight to worry. 

 Some of the navvies who worked in the construction 

 of the early lines of railways owned sundry hard 

 terriers, mostly dashed with bulldog blood. These, 

 like their masters, could fight, were generally kept 

 for such a purpose, and when once properly entered 

 thereto, were almost useless for the actual work a 

 terrier is required for. 



Dr. Edwardes Ker wrote to me some six or seven 

 years ago of a strain of black and tan wire-haired 

 terriers, once common in Suffolk and round about. 

 His informant, Mr. Sharpe Sharpe, was at that time 

 approaching a hundred years old, and for nearly 

 seventy he had been master of fox hounds. These 

 terriers were described as built on modern fox terrier 

 lines, and so game as to go " screaming mad at fox 

 and badger and at anything worth going for." But, 

 as I have said, it was indeed a poor sporting district 

 which did not possess at any rate one fairly distinct 

 strain of terrier, whether such was known under 

 the then all-embracing title of Scotch terrier or the 

 narrower one of the town, mansion, or locality to 

 which it was indigenous. About 1 886 several letters 

 were published relative to these old-fashioned terriers, 



