562 The Dog Book 



We now come to lines outside of Lukey and Thompson. Ackroyd's 

 Dan was partly bulldog, and was kept at Trentham, the Duke of Suther- 

 land's estate. He was a big-headed dog and was considered useful in 

 giving heads. Garret's or Guppy's Nell was out of Lord Darnley's 

 Nell of unknown pedigree and this takes us to Captain Gamier 's Adam 

 and Eve. We are told by Captain Gamier himself that he got them from 

 Bill George, and that Adam was said to be a Lyme Hall. Captain Gamier 

 says he always suspected him of being part boarhound, as they then called 

 the Danes. Eve was got by George from a Leadenhall Market dealer, and 

 she was certainly a good bitch by all accounts; good in type, according to 

 ideals of that day, and stood 29 inches. Captain Gamier took them with 

 him to America, and when he returned the only mastiff he had was one of 

 their puppies named Lion. Wynn several times slurs at this dog Lion as if 

 it had been picked up in America, but Wynn was all for Thompson and even 

 went the length of saying that he was the man who produced Cautley's Qua- 

 ker. He certainly bred him, but how ? The sire was by the big-headed 

 Ackroyd's Dan out of a bitch which Thompson got from Lukey, so there was 

 no Thompson breeding on that side. The dam was out of a bitch he got 

 from Lukey and by Sir G. Armitage's Tiger, a dog that was three-fourths 

 his breeding. That is the way Wynn is misleading. He is a very sound 

 man as to any facts he could find out by persistent effort but when it came 

 to opinions he would twist to suit his views, so that one must form his own 

 conclusions on Wynn's facts. 



It will be seen what very slight support there is for the claim that the 

 mastiff is descended in all its purity from a magnificent lot of dogs of the 

 highest breeding for many generations and through several centuries. 

 The patent facts are that from a number of dogs of various types of English 

 watch-dogs and baiting dogs, running from 26 inches to 29 or perhaps 30 

 inches in height, crossed with continental dogs of Great Dane and of old 

 fashioned St. Bernard type, the mastiff has been elevated through the efforts 

 of English breeders to the dog he became about twenty years ago. It was a 

 creditable piece of work to accomplish all in the short space of forty years, or 

 at most fifty years, for Lukey began in 1835 and Thompson in 1832; and 

 such dogs as The Emperor, The Shah, Rajah, Colonel and Salisbury were 

 shown before 1880 and were all of high type, strides in advance of the pro- 

 duction of ten years before, notwithstanding the talk of old timers about 

 dogs of their youth. Still greater improvement quickly followed in the 



