The Mastiff. 19 



The above opinion of Colonel Gamier' s, written, 

 say, a quarter of a century ago, will scarcely find 

 favour now. There is not the slightest similarity 

 between the smooth St. Bernard and the mastiff, and 

 our English bred specimens of the former are all, as a 

 rule, bigger and heavier than any animals that have 

 been imported. Nor can I see any resemblance, 

 excepting, perhaps, in size, between Landseer's 

 Alpine mastiffs, painted in the early part of that 

 great artist's career, and our own English mastiff. 

 No doubt crosses with some foreign bred dogs were 

 introduced sixty years ago, and even more recently, 

 but at that time canine education was not far 

 advanced, and a dog with a foreign name would 

 bring more money in the market than one that 

 bore a national nomenclature. On this account I 

 fancy pedigrees became somewhat mixed, and, 

 reading all that has been written by Colonel Gamier 

 and others, it would be difficult to believe in the 

 British mastiff as little more than a mongrel rather 

 than as a direct descendant of all that is old in our 

 English dogs. 



We hear of the bulldog cross and the blood- 

 hound cross ; but when were they introduced, 

 and by whom ? These are important questions, 

 which have not hitherto been answered. There 

 is no doubt that amongst modern mastiffs specimens 



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