ORIGIN OF THE FOX-TERRIER. 275 



category of pure breeds. What is the modern Pointer but a development of the old Spanish 

 Pointer by judicious infusions of Foxhound blood ? What is the Setter but a gradual develop- 

 ment of the Field Spaniel by crosses calculated to give size and ranging power ? Where are 

 we to find a certainly pure breed of dog, excepting perhaps the Bull-dog and Mastiff? Yet 

 who would deny the claim of the Laverack Setter or the Sefton Pointer to be now a pure, 

 distinct, and unmanufactured breed ? I make just the same claim for the modern Belvoir 

 Terriers, and for others that can trace back to strains with a definite and well-established type. 

 The purity of blood may not be of so high a degree, but it is the same in kind. 



One argument often used by those who contend that the Fox-terrier is a manufactured 

 dog is the extreme diversity of type, which baffles the efforts of breeders. To my mind this 

 simply proves that there are an immense number of dogs about outwardly resembling Fox-terriers, 

 but without any hereditary claim to the name, and incapable of transmitting even that amount 

 of resemblance which they themselves possess. That breeders should fail, as long as they 

 work with such materials, is but natural. I see no reason to think that if breeders will 

 cultivate hereditary purity of type, and carefully exclude all impure blood, however tempting 

 its immediate results may be, they will find more diversity in Fox-terriers than in any other 

 kind of stock. Another cause of diversity, no doubt, is the system, or rather the no-system, on 

 which Fox-terriers have been bred. So many are bred, and they are in so many hands, and 

 multiply so rapidly, that impure blood has great opportunities of circulating. Moreover, no 

 breed of animal has ever attained a high degree of uniformity and fixity of type, except through 

 the operations of a few breeders, who have worked steadily and patiently from generation to gene- 

 ration with a definite goal in view. No one has yet done for Fox-terriers what two generations of 

 Booths did for Shorthorns ; what Edward Laverack did for Setters. They have for the most 

 part been bred by men who had no real knowledge of the material with which they were 

 working, and no aim beyond an immediate result. Even those who have bred carefully, have 

 kept the control of their materials in their own hands for many generations together. Can 

 we wonder that the result has not been wholly satisfactory ? 



The precise antiquity of the Fox-terrier is, as I have said, a question somewhat hard to solve. 

 There is not, as far as I know, any definite evidence of the existence of the present breed earlier 

 than the memory of men yet living. At the same time there is ample evidence for the existence 

 of Terriers used for the same purposes as the modem Fox-terrier, and it is far from improbable 

 that some of them closely resembled the present breed. For the early existence of Terriers 

 we have the often-quoted evidence of Dr. Keys, or as he preferred to call himself, after the 

 fashion of the day, Caius. In his great work on dogs, already alluded to, he describes Tcrraril, 

 small dogs used for chasing the lesser kinds of vermin and pursuing them underground. But 

 of the shape and appearance of these dogs, and whether they were rough or smooth, he tells 

 us nothing. Later writers who deal with field sports throw but little light on the subject. 

 They occasionally refer to Terriers and their work, but none give us any idea of the external 

 characteristics of the breed. One writer, indeed, tells us that a cross between a Mastiff and 

 a Beagle makes an excellent Terrier ! Another writer, somewhat later, describes the Terrier 

 as a kind of mongrel Greyhound. It is, however, clear that the Terrier was well recognised 

 as a sporting dog. Thus Gilpin, in his description of the New Forest, gives an account, 

 evidently taken from some contemporary writer, of an eccentric Hampshire squire, in the 

 seventeenth century, whose hall was inhabited by his hounds, Spaniels, and Terriers ; and by 

 the manner in which the last are spoken of, it is clear that they were part of a country gentle- 

 man's sporting establishment. There is even more definite evidence that in the last century 



