Hounds and Terriers. 43 



Aberdeen are derived, which once upon a time 

 boasted the thoroughly apposite name of " Die- 

 hard." He is of many colours — black, grey, red, 

 grizzled, cream, and white; weighs from 131b. to 

 171b.; is ''dead game" at anything — I have one 

 that attacked an elephant, and tried to eat a five- 

 months-old leopard cub under the impression that 

 such monstrosities ought not to be allowed to exist — 

 will take the water like a fish, and swim all day. 

 Biodag held a 141b. Otter for ten minutes on one 

 occasion when hounds had passed him and gone on, 

 and he is as good at ^' finding " as a marking fox- 

 hound. He was badly shaken once by a hound as 

 he emerged from a holt after shifting the Otter by 

 another exit and getting rather mauled in the 

 process; but the long, rough hair on his neck and 

 shoulders saved him when a fox-terrier would have 

 succumbed. 



Colonel Malcolm of Poltalloch has a kennel of 

 these terriers, that his family has bred white for 

 generations, and to which he has recently applied the 

 name of White West Highland Terriers. I believe 

 they were originally employed for the purpose of 

 killing Otters. If they do not degenerate into the 

 show-bench Aberdeen type of terrier, and do not 

 become too heavy, they should prove ideal dogs for 

 Otter-hunting purposes, and would look well running 

 with a pack of rough hounds. In fact, several are. 



