420 The Dog Book 



Leicester, when the dog was quite old. He was a shade larger than the 

 usual run of terriers, but was wonderfully true in shape considering that 

 he was then sixteen years of age— he lived to be twenty. He was a white 

 dog with a tan head, and had a pretty good length of coat at the time we 

 speak of. How much of a celebrity he had been and still was through his 

 progeny, at least in our estimation, may be judged by our going fifty miles 

 purposely to see the dog when in England in 1884. He sired Spice, a very 

 successful show dog, but soft coated, and from Spice came a little dog called 

 Mixture that Mr. Thayer imported. This was probably the smallest show 

 dog ever imported, yet he came over as an English champion. He had a 

 good deal more coat than 90 per cent, of the wire-haired terriers of the 

 present day. From the great difference in winning dogs imported at that 

 time from England, it was very evident that type across the Atlantic 

 at that period of terrier history was a matter of personal opinion, and 

 that there was no following a standard which would create anything 

 like uniformity. 



One object in giving this information regarding the breeding of the old 

 fox terriers is to show that they were not the result of breeding for type as 

 we now understand it, but that these were the beginnings of the scientific 

 type breeding. There was no end of close-up old black-and-tan blood as 

 well as bull terrier, and to claim that the smooth white terrier with hound 

 markings, or any of the markings we now know, was the universal dog of 

 1825 to 1850 is entirely contradicted by the facts. It is doubtful whether 

 Colonel Thornton's terriers were bred on, for he went to France and re- 

 mained there, giving up his English breeding, and there is no knowledge 

 of any connecting links with any of his terriers. The terriers were bred 

 for work, and while some had ideals, as they had in the case of hounds or 

 pointers, they were exceptional cases. The mistake many have made is to 

 conclude that because terriers were used for going to earth in fox hunting 

 they were fox terriers and called by that name, and as we have fox terriers, 

 the old and the present were therefore one and the same dog. We have 

 never come across the name fox terrier in any of the old sporting books, nor 

 seen any quotation of the name except the single instance of the rough 

 black-and-tan terrier which Mr. Lee uses as an illustration in his book on 

 the fox terrier. The illustration is from a mezzotint of a painting by De 

 Wilde, published in 1806. The name is too exceptional to permit us to 

 accept it as evidence of nomenclature of that period. 



