337 



CHAPTER XXXIV. 



THE SMOOTH FOX-TERRIER. 



BY DESMOND o'CONNELL. 



" The ivord friend does vot exactly depict the dog's affectionate worship. . . . He 

 is our intimate and impassioned slave, whom nothing discourages, whom nothing 

 repels, whose ardent trust and love nothing can impair." — Maurice Maeterlinxk. 



/"T^O attempt to set forth the origin of 

 I the Fox-terrier as we know him to- 

 day would be of no interest to the 

 general reader, and would entail the task 

 of tracing back the several heterogeneous 

 sources from which he sprang. It is a 

 matter of very little moment whether he 

 owes his origin to the white English Ter- 

 rier or to the Bull -terrier crossed with 

 the Black-and-tan, or whether he has 

 a mixture of Beagle blood in his compo- 

 sition, so it will suffice to take him as 

 he emerged from the chaos of mongrel- 

 dom about the middle of the last cen- 

 tury, rescued in the first instance by the 

 desire of huntsmen or masters of well- 

 known packs to produce a terrier some- 

 what in keeping with their hounds ; and, 

 in the second place, to the advent of dog 

 shows. Prior to that time any dog capable, 

 from his size, conformation, and pluck, of 

 going to ground and bolting his fo.x was a 

 Fox-terrier, were he rough or smooth, black, 

 brown, or white. 



The starting-point of the modern Fox- 

 terrier dates from about the 'sixties, and 

 no pedigrees before that — and many, I fear, 

 of a later time — are worth considering. 

 From three dogs then weU known — Old 

 Jock, Trap, and Tartar — he claims descent ; 

 and, thanks to the Fox-terrier Club and 

 the great care taken in compiling their 

 stud-books, he can be brought down to 

 to-day. Of these three dogs Old Jock 

 was undoubtedly more of a terrier than 

 the others. It is a moot point whether he 

 was bred, as stated in most records of the 

 time, by Captain Percy Williams, master 

 of the Rufford, or by Jack Morgan, hunts- 



man to the Grove ; it seems, however, 

 well established that the former owned his 

 sire, also called Jock, and that his dam, 

 Grove Pepper, was the property of Morgan. 

 He first came before the public at the 

 Birmingham show in 1862, where, shown 

 by Mr. Wootton, of Nottingham, he won 

 ftrst prize. He subsequently changed hands 

 several times, till he becrime the property 

 of Mr. Murchison, in whose hands he died 

 in the early 'seventies. He was exhibited 

 for the last time at the Crystal Palace in 

 1870, and though then over ten years old 

 won second to the same owner's Trimmer. 

 At his best he was a smart, well-balanced 

 terrier, with perhaps too much daylight 

 under him, and wanting somewhat in jaw 

 power ; but he showed far less of the 

 BuU-terrier type than did his contemporary 

 Tartar. 



This dog's antecedents were very ques- 

 tionable, and his breeder is given as Mr. 

 Stevenson, of Chester, most of whose dogs 

 were Bull-terriers pure and simple, save 

 that they had drop ears and short sterns, 

 being in this respect unlike old Trap, 

 whose sire is generally supposed to have 

 been a Black-and-tan terrier. This dog 

 came from the Oakley kennels, and he was. 

 supposed to have been bred by a miller 

 at Leicester. However questionable the 

 antecedents of these three terriers may 

 have been, they are undoubtedly the 

 progenitors of our present strain, and from 

 them arose the kennels that we have to- 

 day. 



Mention has been made of Mr. Murchison, 

 and to him we owe in a great measure 

 the start in popularity which since the 



43 



