The Fox Terrier. 



When the learned Dr. Caius, in the year 1570, wrote 

 what he knew about a terrier, the little quadruped had his 

 home in the kennels of those days, sheds, in fact, where 

 his bed was often filthy straw, and his food any scraps he 

 might filch from the more important hounds. The latter 

 were fairly well fed, especially when a cow sickened and 

 died, or a horse in the locality of the kennels broke a leg, 

 but the little terrier had, in nine cases out of ten, to look 

 out for himself, and usually bore a bad reputation. He 

 was said to bite and be cantankerous, predisposed to 

 mange, and only a fit companion for the stable-boy or the 

 feeder. That he was not exterminated by the ill-treatment 

 he had suffered for generations is surprising, and proof 

 positive of his hardihood — a survival of the fittest indeed. 



How the fox terrier came to be produced we have nothing 

 but mere supposition to determine, though, further on, an 

 interesting little bit of canine history more than suggests that 

 Dick Burton, once first whip to the Burton (Lincolnshire) 

 hounds, first formed the modern type of fox terrier. That 

 there have been varieties of terriers of one kind and another 

 for many hundreds of years no one doubts. The Chinese 

 have had terriers possibly for a longer period than we in this 

 country have possessed ours. The former had the credit 

 of eating theirs ; our forefathers preferred using them for 

 a different purpose. However, if the Chinese gentry did 

 prefer dogs as food, the neighbouring Tartars treated their 

 terriers better ; and, no doubt, amongst the five thousand 

 " hounds/' Marco Polo, writing in the thirteenth century, 

 tells us the Grand Khan kept, there would be at least 

 a few terriers, for this gigantic pack contained several 

 varieties of the canine race. Even at that time many of 

 the nobilitv in the East preferred to talk of their hound- 



