THE BRITISH PUGNACES. 63 



In a work entitled " Old England " under Bestiaria is given 

 the cut of a sculpture found at Pompeii of a large mastiff 

 chained by the neck to a band round the body of a bull ; the 

 dog is in the act of flying at a man in front, while the bull is 

 galloping after the dog, and another man is running behind 

 with a whip. This dog was quite as large as our modern 

 mastiffs, and was a short headed, blunt muzzled, fine coated 

 animal. This piece of sculpture has been regarded (on what 

 authority I am unaware) as a specimen imported from Britain. 

 However, it forms a conclusive proof of the mastiffs existence 

 previous to A.D. 79. 



Mr. Yero Shaw in his book on the Dog, gives a cut of two 

 early mastiffs, as usual incorrectly termed canes molossi, 

 taken fro in" J. F. Reidels " Icones AnimaUum." which work 

 is in the British Museum. Both these dogs have large heads, 

 short, blunt, truncated, and somewhat turned up muzzles, 

 and were evidently undershot, and prove the correctness of 

 the so called bull type in opposition to the sheepdog, boar- 

 hound, or bloodhound types, which by the ignorant have 

 sometimes been mistaken for the true mastiff type. Both 

 the dogs in Icones Animalium are large animals, leggy, and 

 totally different from the modern bulldog in size. The ears 

 in both specimens are cropped as shown in the Durobrivan 

 examples. Their sterns are fine and long. 



I have purposely extended these remarks to show that at 

 the time of the Roman dominion over this country we 

 certainly possessed the British mastiff, of distinct character, 

 and large size, at least from 27 to 30 inches at shoulder or 

 more, and from Arrian's account, and other data, it would 

 seem that this breed had then been manufactured from larger 

 crosses with the pure pugnaces of Britain and Gaul. Thus 



