96 THE MASTIFF DURING ELIZABETH'S REIGN. 



" um read Albanium, when lie calls him the monstrous fat 

 " (sagma) Alpine dog, more capable of doing mischief with 

 "his heels than his teeth, etc.'' 



St. Jerome's work, which was published at Frankfort, in 

 1602, I have not seen, the author himself flourished about 

 1414, but the passage is most interesting to the philokunist, 

 as it reads like an instance of the word " sagina " being 

 applied, as descriptive of the gloriously good tempered old 

 Alpine mastiff, whose clumsy dew-clawed heels were liable 

 to do more mischief than they had any idea of doing with 

 their teeth. 



Camden stating that he did not ever remember to have 

 heard of Alpine dogs, would seem that the old smooth St. 

 Bernard or Alpine mastiff, had not in 1607 gained any 

 notoriety, although it has been conjectured by some to have 

 been originally procured from England. When subsequently 

 brought from the Alps to this country, it assisted materially 

 in recussitating the English mastiff from 1800 to 1830. 



It is here worthy of remark that the French appear to have 

 imported from us the word dogue to denote the mastiff and 

 bulldog, which about 1600 they appear to have considered 

 was peculiar to Britain. Menage, a French literary writer, 

 who flourished from 1613 to 1692, and who particularly 

 concerned himself with the derivation of French words, says : 

 " Dogue, a large thick-set English dog, derived from the 

 English word dog." This shows that a French etymologist 

 of the i yth century, considered the dogue or mastiff to be a 

 large, thick-set, English dog. But to return to Caius, it is 

 evident that the mastiff and bulldog were alike classed as 

 bandogs, massivcs, or mastiffs, these terms plainly having to 



