The Maltese. 315 



the learned Bochart, in his " Hierozoicon," quotes him 

 as likely to be right in his statement. Others have 

 said the dog first came from Melita in the Medi- 

 terranean, which island is at the present time 

 generally acknowledged, though I believe wrongly, 

 to be the native country of the Maltese toy dog. 



However, the most complete record of the early 

 history of the Maltese dog is to be found in the 

 Natural History of Ulysses Aldrovandus, who died in 

 1607. His great work, which was in Latin, was 

 published after his death. He says there are two 

 varieties of this Maltese dog, one of which was 

 comparatively short in its coat, the other long ; and 

 as he was unable to say which was correct, he gave us 

 illustrations of each. Both are identical, excepting 

 so far as coat is concerned, that with the longer 

 jacket being pretty much the same dog as we find 

 to-day. The second is the smaller of the two, and, 

 although by no means short-coated, is not so long in 

 the jacket as the other. Aldrovandus quotes pretty 

 freely from other writers, especially as to the origin 

 of this little dog, Blondus ascribing it to Spain, and 

 Gesner to Lyons. However, we must be contented 

 that it came from Malta. In the seventeenth century 

 we are told the best colours were white and red 

 (? fawn), but some were black and white. The 

 smaller they were the better and more valuable they 



