The " Compleate Sportsman." 9 



is scarcely complimentary when he attributes that quality 

 as a distinctive feature of the " cur." The latter must not 

 be taken as the collie or sheep dog, by which name the 

 latter is known at the present time in many parts of the 

 country, but rather as a cross-bred, hardy animal, one not 

 to be dismayed by hard bites or blows and the bitterness 

 of the elements. Nor of necessity need such dogs be 

 mongrels, the latter, no doubt, coming under the applica- 

 tion of " dunghill dogs," as used by Dame Juliana Berners 

 in her " Book of St. Albans." 



In the " Compleate Sportsman " (1718), Jacobs mentions 

 two sorts of terriers, which he describes pretty much as 

 Nicholas Cox had done before him, so a repetition thereof 

 need not be made here ; and, although one modern writer 

 believes that the fox terrier was manufactured within the 

 present thirty years or so, no further proof need be 

 given than has so far appeared in these pages, that such 

 terriers have been common in England for, at any rate, 

 ten times thirty years. In fact, with the country overrun 

 as it was in those days, with four-footed vermin of all 

 kinds, which destroyed the poultry and played sad havoc 

 with the flocks, dogs of one sort or another to keep down 

 the marauders were simply a necessity. And a terrier 

 small enough to drag the fox from his earth, or kill him 

 therein, was found the most useful for the purpose. So 

 long as he could do this, appearance and colour were not 

 taken into consideration to any great extent. 



About 1760, Daniel, in his " Field Sports," goes a little 

 oyt of the beaten track in writing on the terriers of his 

 day, and his description must be taken as correct, 

 made from the animals themselves, of which it has been 

 said that author kept a considerable number. " There 



