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CHAPTER XXIV. 



THE TUG. 



THERE is considerable uncertainty in regard to the origin of this peculiar breed of dog, but there 

 is a decided preponderance of opinion in favour of his being an offshoot, in some form or 

 other, from the Bull-dog. There are several formations identical to the two breeds, which very 

 much influence us in favour of this opinion, even if there were not in the present day the 

 gravest suspicion for imagining that modern breeders in some instances have availed them- 

 selves of a Bull cross in hopes of improving their strain in certain qualities. Rightly or 

 wrongly, the Dutch have had the credit from time immemorial of first introducing the breed 

 into public favour. For our own part we can see no positive grounds for the absolute accuracy 

 of this popular belief, which though referred to by more than one of the writers on the dog 

 in the earlier part of the century, was evidently not even then unanimously accepted as an 

 incontrovertible fact. The author of the " Sportsman's Repository," to which reference has 

 been already made, remarked some sixty years ago that 



" The Pug Dog is generally styled the Dutch Pug, and it is taken for granted that the 

 breed is indigenous to Holland, since, according to universal but dateless tradition, it was 

 originally imported hither from that country. Pugs indeed are numerous throughout the 

 Low Countries, and, we believe, most of the northern part of the Continent. There is yet an 

 obscure but confident tradition, that Pugism had its origin in Muscovy ; which, being granted, 

 we may not have been wide of the mark in tracing in it the form of the Arctic dog. Another, 

 and which we deem an inconsequent conjecture on this most important affair of origination, is the 

 Pug being, according to certain sage conjecturists, a sample or first-class mongrel, the production 

 of a commixture between the English Bulldog and the little Dane, a conjecture we feel 

 inclined to define by the figure hysteron-proteron, or setting the cart before the horse. We 

 hold the Pug to be of the elder house ; and if at this perilous anti-parodial crisis we may 

 venture at a secular parody, the motto of the illustrious race of Pugs ought to be, not we 

 from Bulls, but Bulls from us." 



V 



As our readers may conjecture, we do not by any means agree with the latter observation 

 of the writer, as we have, in a former portion of this work, already expressed very decided 

 opinions on the antiquity of the Bull-dig. Again, from another point of view, we cannot see 

 how the small-sized Pug can be taken to be the ancestor of the large-framed, big-boned, 

 and determined dispositioned Bull-dog, which is an animal far more likely to originate a race 

 than the somewhat stupid and uninteresting Pug. The origin of this latter word is difficult 

 of discovery, but in many quarters it is believed to be derived from the word pugnus, a fist, 

 whether because of the dog's shape or former size we are unable to conjecture. 



For some time on the Continent, in France especially, Pugs went by the name of Carlins, 

 owing to the black mask on their faces, which is a characteristic of the breed. The analogy 



