CHAPTER LX 



The Maltese Dog 



jS the toy dog to which has been given the name of Mal- 

 tese has no connection whatever with any branch of the 

 terrier family we drop the suffix which it is customary to 

 add to the name. If a suffix was necessary it should be 

 poodle or to go still farther back it might be spaniel, but 

 never terrier. Every writer goes back to Strabo and his remark about the 

 dogs of Melita, Sicily, but merely saying that dogs came from Melita in his 

 days and for us to call a dog Maltese by no means carries any weight in sup- 

 posing that our white toys were what Strabo referred to. They may be, 

 but there is nothing to prove that they are. 



The name of Maltese is of comparatively recent adoption and a hundred 

 years ago they were called shock dogs. That is purely an English name, 

 taken from the wealth of coat, probably not always combed out and even in 

 the Standard Dictonary we find shock-dog as a second meaning of the 

 noun "shock." Buffon gave it the name of the Chien de Make or Bichon 

 and in the fuller description in his "Histoire Naturelle," written by M. 

 Daubenton, Bichon is the name at the head of the following description: 

 "These dogs were very fashionable a few years ago, but at present are hard- 

 ly seen. They were so small that ladies carried them in their sleeves. At 

 last they gave them up, doubtless because of the dirtiness that is insep- 

 arable from long-haired dogs, for they could not clip them without taking 

 away their principal attraction. So few remain that I could not find one 

 to make a drawing of and the illustration on Plate XL is a copy of a drawing 

 in the large and beautiful collection of natural history miniatures in the 

 print room of the library of the King. So far as we can judge from this 

 illustration it seems that this dog has the muzzle of the petit harhet [small 

 poodle], and the long glossy coat of the spaniel on the body. That is why 

 they gave it the name of "Bouffe" [puffed]. It is also called the Maltese 

 dog, because the first specimens came from Malta. There is reason to 



691 



