THE WEST HIGHLAND WHITE TERRIER. 



391 



the rocks under and between which his 

 quarry harbours, makes use of the small 

 dog which will go under ground, to which 

 the French name terrier has been attached. 



Towards the end of the reign of James 

 the First of England and Sixth of Scotland, 

 we find him writing to Edinburgh to have 

 half a dozen " earth dogges or terrieres " 

 sent carefully to France as a present, and 

 he directs that they be got from Argyll, 

 and sent over in two or more ships lest 

 they should get harm 

 by the way. That was 

 roughly three hundred 

 years ago, and the King 

 most probably would not 

 have so highly valued 

 a newly invented strain 

 as he evidentl}' did value 

 the " terrieres " from 

 Argyll. W'e may take 

 it then, I think, that 

 in 1600 the Argyllshire 

 terriers were considered 

 to be the best in Scot- 

 land, and likely enough 

 too, seeing the almost 

 boundless opportunities 

 the county gives for the 

 work of the " earth 

 dogges." 



But men kept their 

 dogs in the e\-il pre-show 

 days for work and not 

 for points, and mighty 

 indifferent were they whether an ear 

 cocked up or lay flat to the cheek, 

 whether the tail was exactly of fancy length, 

 or how high to a hair's breadth it stood. 

 These things are sine qua non on the modern 

 show bench, but were not thought of in 

 the cruel, hard fighting days of old. 



In those days two things — and two 

 things only — were imperatively necessary : 

 pluck and capacity to get at the quarry. 

 This entailed that the body in which the 

 pluck was enshrined must be small and 

 most active, to get at the innermost re- 

 cesses of the lair, and that the body must 

 be protected by the best possible teeth 

 and jaws for fighting, on a strong and 



rather long neck and directed by a most 

 capable brain. It is held that feet turned 

 out a little are better for scrambling up 

 rocks than perfectly straight Fox-terrier 

 like feet. In addition, it was useful to 

 have your dog of a colour easy to see when 

 in motion, though I expect that no great 

 weight was laid upon that point, as in the 

 days before newspapers and trains men's 

 eyes were good, as a rule. Still, the quantity 

 of white in the existing terriers all through 



■ V ■.■r. 



SPORTING DOGS DRAWN BY SIR EDWIN LANDSEER, 

 SHOWING A WEST HIGHLAND WHITE TERRIER. 



R.A. (18391, 



the west coast of Scotland shows that it 

 must have been rather a favoured colour. 



I have been asked to give an account of 

 these dogs because I ventured to show 

 them some years ago, and to bring before 

 the general public the claims of this most 

 ancient race. When first I showed in 

 Edinburgh, an old gentleman came up to 

 me and thanked me most warmly for having 

 revived in his breast the joys of fifty years 

 before, when he used to hunt otters on the 

 shores of Loch Fyne with terriers just 

 like mine, colour and all. I can now, alas, 

 answer personally for their having been at 

 Poltalloch sixty years ago, and so they 

 were first shown as Poltalloch Terriers. 



