152 The Fox Terrier. 



There appears a semblance of strangeness that the wire- 

 haired terriers from Devonshire have not been more used 

 for show bench purposes, and by all accounts some of 

 them were as good in looks as they had on many occasions 

 proved in deeds. Those owned by the Rev. John Russell 

 have acquired a world-wide reputation, yet we look in 

 vain for many remnants of the strain in the stud books, 

 and the county of broad acres has once again distanced 

 the southern one in the race for money. But, although 

 the generous clerical sportsman occasionally consented to 

 judge terriers at some of the local shows in the West, he 

 was not much of a believer in such exhibitions. So far as 

 dogs, and horses too, were concerned, with him it was 

 " handsome is that handsome does," and so long as it did 

 its work properly, one short leg and three long ones was 

 no eye-sore in any terrier owned by this popular west 

 country parson. How he came to obtain a strain of them 

 at all is admirably told in his Memoir by the author of 

 " Dartmoor Days." 



" Russell had been in residence some fourteen terms, 

 and was now, with a view to his final examination, busily 

 employed in preparing for the schools and furbishing up 

 his old Tiverton armour, which he was not slow to discover 

 had grown somewhat rusty by habitual disuse and the easy 

 conditions of his college life. His degree being of para- 

 mount importance to him, the short period that now 

 remained for getting up his books was naturally accom- 

 panied by the inevitable doubt and anxiety which even the 

 ablest scholars are apt to feel at such a time. 



" It was on a glorious afternoon towards the end of 

 May, when strolling round Magdalen Meadow with Horace 

 in hand, but Beckford in his head, he emerged from the 



