Mr. Doyle's Opinion. 145 



are better or worse than they were is a question to which I 

 will come later on. It is only certain that passably good ones 

 are far more numerous. Every large breeder is to-day able 

 to draft bitches which twenty-five years ago he would have 

 looked on as valuable breeding material. It is not merely 

 in general symmetry and smartness that this is seen, but I 

 think even more distinctly in those points which make up 

 what we are agreed to call terrier character. Jock, 

 Hornet, and Tyrant may have been even more terrier-like 

 than the best prize winners of to-day ; but the benches 

 then were loaded with dogs that showed bull or English 

 terrier at every point, and such have now vanished. 



" I may also, I think, at once claim another point wherein 

 the dogs of to-day score. They last far better. Some, I 

 daresay, remember what that once beautiful dog, Mr. 

 Bassett's Tip, became in his later days. Bitters did not 

 fare a great deal better. In fact in my young days of show- 

 ing, a dog was looked on as a veteran at four or five. 

 Vesuvienne was as good as ever when she last graced the 

 show ring. Such as Venio and Dominie can yet hold their 

 own against most young dogs. 



" I do not, however, in the least pretend that by what I 

 have said so far I have disposed of the complaints which we 

 occasionally hear of deterioration in our fox terriers. Those 

 who make such complaints would say, I take it, that while 

 there are more fairly good dogs, there are fewer really first 

 class ones, and that the prize winners of the present day are 

 unworthy to rank with their predecessors. I have more 

 than once heard this put very strongly. I have been told 

 that the type has changed, that the modern fox terrier is a 

 new creation altogether. I have observed that this is 

 generally said by those who have given no very special 



L 



