The Mastiff 553 



not so distinctly state that the dog to which he gives the name of "dogue de 

 forte race" was a cross-bred animal between the dogue (the English bulldog), 

 and the largest of the French dogs called the matin, it would be open to sur- 

 mise that it was the lineal descendant of the alauntz ventreres, but that door 

 is closed by Buffon's statement and by his declining to recognize it as any- 

 thing but a cross-bred dog. 



Another point in the same line is that there does not appear to be any 

 dog illustrated by artists of the seventeenth century which bears out the des- 

 cription given by Gaston de Phoebus, and that of three hundred years later 

 by Buffon. It might be held that the variety had been given up in France 

 and survived in England, but the evidence as to the mastiff in England is 

 quite to the contrary, and if there had been any dog there so much larger than 

 the bulldog, as Buffon describes that dog, he would surely have been aware 

 of it. The evidence we shall present regarding the dog called the mastiff be- 

 fore and up to 1800 does not conclusively show any great dissimilarity be- 

 tween the mastiff and the bulldog of that time. We mean by that that the 

 dividing line was not specially marked by a great dissimilarity of size or of 

 type. The bulldogs differed in size and the mastiffs also, making them 

 closely allied when it came to the larger bulldog and the smaller mastiff. 

 The first illustration which is undoubtedly that of a mastiff from a present- 

 day standpoint is the Buffon drawing, and that was not a dog which that 

 authority would recognize as an original breed, or an established breed as we 

 now use that term. Yet it was sufficiently numerous in France to find a 

 place in his division of the canine race. 



When the name of mastiff or any of its equivalents was used in England 

 in the early days there is nothing to show that the dogs held very high rank. 

 Some dogs that did so were called mastiffs, that we admit, but these were in- 

 dividual dogs and not indicative of the breed, which filled many useful posi- 

 tions, but nearly all inferior to those of the dogs of the chase, kept by English 

 nobility. Chaucer knew the difference between the alaunt and the mastiff, 

 and describes the king of Trace as being surrounded by the former. 



"Aboute his char ther wenten whyte alaunts, 

 Twenty and mo, as grete as any steer, 

 To hunten at the leoun or the deer 

 And folwed him, with mosel faste ybounde, 

 Colers of gold, and torets fyled rounde." 



