236 DOGS 



may be a question whether he will retain his 

 hereditary qualities when successive generations 

 have had no practice in shepherding. But it is 

 certain that he will never lose his intelligence. 

 His face is full of expression, and there is Scottish 

 shrewdness in the somewhat small eyes, which look 

 as if they had contracted with blinking in the teeth 

 of Highland blizzards. I always think a collie 

 seems out of place in the south, as if he missed 

 his serious occupations and was bored by being a 

 gentleman at leisure. There is a wistful pathos in 

 those eyes of his, when I see him chained in the 

 portico of a club, waiting for his master. High- 

 lander or Borderer, he is out of place on the 

 pavements of Pall Mall, and his ancestors knew 

 nothing of chain or collar. For though popularly 

 supposed to come from the far north, it is only 

 comparatively lately that sheep-walks were intro- 

 duced in the Highlands, and unquestionably the 

 race originated in the green glens of the Borders. 

 When at home with the shepherds, they said he 

 could do everything but speak, and he could cer- 

 tainly understand spoken language. There are so 

 many well-authenticated stories of his sagacity that 

 we can only believe and wonder. One of the most 

 remarkable is told by the Ettrick Shepherd. One 

 misty evening, in what had once been the forest of 

 Ettrick, 500 of his sheep were missing. Turning 

 to his dog for sympathy, and not dreaming of any- 

 thing more, he ejaculated despondingly, '^ Sirrah, 



