CHAPTER VI. 



THE MASTIFF. 



THE Mastiff occupies an undoubtedly high position in the canine world ; and there are not wanting 

 many of its partisans who solemnly avow that there exist unmistakable proofs of its being par 

 excellence the national dog of the country. With this somewhat ambitious boast we confess 

 ourselves unable to agree, for reasons which can be gone into hereafter ; but there can be no 

 possible difference of opinion as regards the extreme antiquity of the breed, mention having been 

 frequently made of it by many of the earliest classic writers. Considerable confusion appears to 

 have existed formerly between this dog and the Bulldog, for the descriptions we find in various 

 writers of the Molossus a name which was conferred upon this breed in consequence of its 

 supposed origin in Molossis in Greece coincide very often with those we discover elsewhere of 

 the Bulldog. According to Edmund de Langley, in his MS., " The Mayster of Game," 

 published in the fourteenth century, two distinct breeds of dogs, the Molossus and the Alaunt, 

 were in existence. The former appears to have been reserved for the guardianship of persons and 

 property, whilst the latter, described by him as a short-headed dog, pugnacious, and gifted with 

 an inclination to hang on to anything attacked by it, was used for baiting the bull. Linnaeus, 

 in the classification which he has drawn up, on the other hand describes the Bulldog as coming 

 under the classification of Canis Molossus, whilst the Mastiff is in the next section under the 

 title of Canis Anglicus, also called Canis Bellicosus, and by Ray, Canis Mastivus. Dr. Caius, 

 physician to Queen Elizabeth (and, by the way, one of the founders of Caius College, Cambridge^ 

 in his book published about A.D. 1570, describes but one dog which can in any degree be made 

 to resemble either the Mastiff or the Bulldog. This he alludes to under the name of Mastive or 

 Bandogge, and a portion of his description is as follows : " An huge dogge, stubborne, eager, 

 burthenous of body, and therefore of but little swiftness, terrible and fearful to behold, and more 

 fearse and fell than any Arcadian cur." This description, indefinite as it is, would seem to 

 apply almost as well to the Bulldog as to the Mastiff: first on account of direct allusion being 

 made to " Archadien curres," which must be taken as referring to the Molossus or Mastiff of 

 Edmund de Langley, whose work is made use of most freely by Caius ; and, secondly, from the 

 description he gives of the animal's character, and the remarks he makes a little further on 

 concerning the creatures one of them had been known to overcome in single combat for the 

 especial edification of the " Frenche King." But still, from the fact of no separate allusion having 

 been made by Caius to another variety of the dog which in any way resembled the one in 

 question, we are driven back upon the supposition that about this period the distinction between 

 the Molossus and the Alaunt, or the Canis Molossus and the Canis Anglicus, had nearly died out, 

 probably from carelessness in the breeding of the two varieties, and that the breeds were so nearly 

 amalgamated as to be with difficulty separated, a task which Dr. Caius does not appear to have 

 attempted. 



With the view of giving our readers an idea of what a real Molossus was like in appearance, 

 we copy, in Figs. 24 and 25, two representations from an illustrated work in the British Museum, 



