550 The Dog Book 



questioned or contradicted the statement that the French mastin and the 

 English mastiff were similar dogs. They were neither similar in character 

 nor type, but dogs of the same description as to use and position in the ranks 

 of dogs. The mastiff is also called the Molossian dog, and because the names 

 were synonymous with many writers we again find that modern inter- 

 preters assume that the Mollossus was the counterpart of our mastiff. The 

 question that has first to be settled is as to the Molossus, and then comes 

 that as to the mastin. 



In Chapter I., facing page 20, will be found a photograph of the plaster 

 reproduction of the Molossian dog at Athens; and it does not need a second's 

 contemplation to decide that the dog is a Great Dane in type, and is thor- 

 oughly devoid of what we call mastiff type in head. This is the dog that is 

 continually mentioned as the broad-mouthed animal, and because our mas- 

 tiffs are broad-mouthed, hence many writers have assumed that they must 

 be the same dog. That illustration disposes of the fact that the Molossian 

 was what we call a mastiff. 



Before showing what the mastin was five hundred years ago, it will be 

 well to consider what the meaning or derivation of the word mastiff is. 

 Among the various claims is that given above as to "Masethefe";and Mar- 

 wood, who perhaps originated this, is copied by Jesse in his "Anecdotes of 

 Dogs." Wynn believed it was a Gallic form of massivus, the "t" being in- 

 terchanged for the "s," the word being derived from massa, a mass. 

 Mastinus was also a common Latin manner of spelling the word. Some held 

 that mastiff was a contraction of mansatinus, a dog that stays as a house dog. 

 Our etymologists are in a much better position to give the correct inter- 

 pretation of old words than their predecessors, and the up-to-date meaning 

 of mastiff is a mongrel or cross-bred dog. 



The mastins were used in wild-boar hunting, as we find in Gaston de 

 Phoebus, but not because they were so much more courageous than other 

 dogs, such as the alaunt, which was the high-class dog; but in order to 

 avoid the risk of losing the more valuable dogs, these keen-fighting, half-bred 

 dogs were also used to run in at the boar at bay and at the wolf. What these 

 early mastins were like is seen by the illustration from the Gaston de Phoe- 

 bus reproductions which we copy from "The Master of Game." There is 

 little doubt that they were dogs very similar to the Pyrenean sheep dogs of 

 the present. In Johnson's "Costumes of the Pyrenees" (1832) there is an 

 illustration of a woman of the Valley of Ariege with one of these dogs, and the 



