A VARIETY OR CROSSED BREED. 151 



THE BULL DOG. 



NATURALISTS have generally described the BULL DOG, as of a primitive 

 Species, upon a level, in that respect, with the Shepherd's Dog, and Irish Grey- 

 hound; and the Writers of this Country, have claimed him as indigenous to 

 Britain, where he has been preserved in his native purity and ferocity, and whence 

 other Countries have been supplied with the breed. 



We can agree with the above statement but in part. So far as we have been 

 able to investigate the matter, it appears that the Bull Dog is a Variety, not a 

 primitive Species of the canine genus : that Variety has indeed, from the strongest 

 probability, been raised, as well as cultivated, in England; thence the Bull Dog 

 is truly an English breed. The grounds of our opinion, which follow, are open to 

 be controverted by any Bull-hanker of more recondite information. To recur to 

 our earliest records on such subjects, during the period in which this Country was 

 subject to the Romans, it was famous for hounds and fierce dogs of a larg'e size, 

 supposed to be the original Mastiffs, but there is no hint or trace of such a peculiar 

 breed as that of the Bull Dog ; nor do we discover any trace of such a breed in 

 the reign of John, the era in which the damnable practice of Bull-baiting com- 

 menced. Nor is the Bull dog to be found in the Synopsis of British Dogs, extracted 

 by Mr. Daniel from the book of Doctor Caius, who wrote in the Reign of Queen 

 Elizabeth. 



The first Bull-Bait of which any record is to be found, took place in the reign 

 of King John, at Stamford, in Lincolnshire ; and William, Earl Warren, Lord of 

 Stamford, has the infamous honour of being handed down to posterity, as the ori- 

 ginator and patron of that insensate and beastly diversion. This Noble, worthy of 

 the half-savage times in which he lived, standing on the wall of Stamford Castle, 

 saw two bulls fighting for a female, in the Castle meadow, until one of the bulls, 

 attacked and affrighted by some butchers' dogs, was by them pursued quite 

 through the town. The sight so tickled and aroused the Sporting sensations of 

 the noble Earl, that he immediately made over as a gift to the butchers of the 

 town, the said Castle meadow, as a common, after the first crop of grass had 

 been mowed, on condition that they should annually find a mad bull, the day 

 six weeks before Christmas day, to be devoted to that sport, which was to be con- 

 tinued for ever. 



In the above relation, it is observable that, the dogs which attacked and pursued 

 the bull are simply called butchers' dogs, and not distinguished as of any peculiar 

 breed ; bull dogs indeed they could not have been styled, granting they had been 



