30 The Collie or Sheep Dog. 



frequently found than others, but I have observed smooth 

 bob-tailed dogs, the ordinary rough-coated ones likewise, 

 as well as the commoner drover's dogs, all born without 

 tails or with the merest apology for the same. I am aware 

 that there are opinions diverse to these of mine, but, 

 although there has not yet been produced in this country a 

 true variety of terrier which comes into the world with 

 tails already shortened, occasional cases do occur. Two or 

 three at least have come under my own personal know- 

 ledge, and, so long ago as eighteen years, I myself bred two 

 fox terriers of prize strains born with their tails already 

 shortened. They were not good specimens, so came to be 

 drowned ; but no doubt from a dog so born, mated with a 

 bitch bearing a similar peculiarity, a race of bob-tailed fox 

 terriers could in due course have been produced. As a 

 fact, even in the pure strains of the old English sheep dog, 

 which are supposed to be whelped without a tail at all, 

 caudal appendages varying in length are even oftener 

 produced than not. 



Bearing on the same subject come the Schipperkes from 

 the Dutch canal boats, black little dogs recently introduced 

 into this country, and usually born without tails. Surely, 

 nature in the first instance never made them so, and con- 

 tinued docking as a process of undesirable civilisation, must 

 have produced the result. Both in this variety and in the 

 natural bob-tailed Old English sheepdogs, puppies with and 

 without tails are produced in the same litters. We search in 

 vain for an instance where nature has produced tailless speci- 

 mens of the canidds or even of the carnivorse in their feral 

 state, the nearest approach thereto being in the lynxes, a 

 race thoroughly distinct as compared with any of the 

 species from which the common dog may have sprung. 



