The St. Bernard. 43 



hue, a pleasant-looking, smooth-coated dog, with 

 nice character, I have been told, but a pigmy in 

 comparison with the giants of our times. Some 

 modern champions, with their thick, shaggy coats, 

 twisted hind legs and huge heads, would, I am afraid, 

 make but sorry headway through the snow, even 

 though they might possess " double dew claws," 

 with which nature was said to have provided them 

 in order that they should not sink in the snowdrifts. 

 Happily the latter fallacy has been exploded, and 

 neither the absence of or presence of such abnormal 

 excrescences has the slightest weight with a judge 

 of St. Bernards at the present day. As a fact, the 

 Swiss monks prefer the smooth or short-coated 

 dogs, for reasons which are sufficiently obvious. 



About thirty years it is since this dog began to 

 obtain popularity in this country. A year or two 

 before that time, specimens had occasionally 

 appeared at our earlier dog shows, in the " variety " 

 classes mostly, but in 1863 there was a canine 

 exhibition at Cremorne Gardens, and here a section 

 was specially provided for the novel variety, and it 

 had an entry of fifteen. Lord Garvagh was the 

 judge, and he gave the first prize to the Rev. N. 

 Bates's Monk an imported dog, said at the time, as 

 all imported dogs then were, to be descended from 

 the celebrated Barry. The Field report of the show 



