152 THE SHORT-HAIRED SKYE TERRIER 



them pride of place, saying that twenty years ago 

 he judged classes of them in the North of Scotland, 

 and that there is a breed now kept by the factor 

 of one 0f the landowners in the Island of Skye 

 which represents the true terrier, and this is not a 

 long-haired animal at all. Mr. Astley further thinks 

 that the more familiar Skye, as well as the Scottish 

 Terrier, are descended from these dogs. Mr. A. R. 

 Macdonald, of Waternish, Skye, says that to his know- 

 ledge this breed has been in his own family for 

 upwards of eighty years, but how long prior to that 

 is a matter of uncertainty. His grandfather kept 

 them chiefly for otter-hunting along the Skye coast, 

 where the otters tal$e up their abodes in the large 

 cairns at the base of the precipitous cliffs. His 

 late uncle, Captain Macdonald, of Waternish, who was 

 born in Skye in 1823, kept one of the best packs 

 of short-haired Skyes in the island. He always main- 

 tained that they were the real thing, and that the 

 long-haired breed were not, but were the descendants 

 of a Maltese Terrier and a Poodle. From a literary 

 point of view it is interesting to note that this gentle- 

 man's grandmother on the paternal side was a 

 daughter of Mackinnon of Carryatachan, who enter- 

 tained Dr. Johnson and Boswell in 1773. 



As has been alluded to in the previous chapter, 

 there was a long correspondence in the old Stock 

 Keeper in 1894-5, when the question of Skye type 

 occasioned much diversity of opinion. Mr. James 

 Pratt sent to this paper a sketch copied from a 

 water-coloured drawing by Mr. Alfred Strutt of the 

 old Skye Terrier bitch, Dunvegan. She was kept 

 by McLeod of McLeod, and as she won a first prize 

 at the Birmingham Dog Show in 1871, she evidently 



