BREEDING FOX-TERRIERS. 291 



owner out of competition. The head should be cleanly chiselled out below the eye, and 

 the eye itself should be small and keen-looking, and on no account projecting. The eyes 

 should be rather wide apart, and the forehead proportionately broad, and not conical like 

 a Setter's. The ears should be small, triangular, and not too thin. They should not be 

 set too high on the head, though that is better than their hanging helplessly from the neck. 

 While on the subject of ears, I may mention to young readers that they never need fret 

 themselves as to a puppy's mode of carrying its ears. I have known more than one 

 case where the ears were never quite properly carried till the dog was in his second year. 

 With bitches the first litter of pups often proves a turning-point. Lastly, I come to that 

 all-important feature Terrier character. The true Fox-terrier has a look of dash and 

 vivacity which marks him off from almost all other breeds. A friend of mine, no inexperienced 

 judge, goes so far as to say that at a show you can always tell the well-bred dogs by watching 

 which wag their tails on the bench. Undoubtedly a cheerful temper and a gay lively carriage 

 are essential features of the breed. Many a well-made dog has a stiff, wooden look, and from 

 such I should be very loth to breed. 



As to kennel management and the like, I do not know that there is anything in the 

 Fox-terrier that requires special notice. It may not be amiss, however, to give a few 

 words of advice to young breeders, and perhaps I cannot begin better than by describing the 

 method in which such too often set to work. Our would-be exhibitor sees a bitch whose 

 appearance pleases him. Her pedigree contains the names of a few well-known dogs. 

 Without considering whether there is a likelihood of her reproducing her own qualities, 

 whether those qualities are really obtained by descent, and sufficiently stereotyped in the family 

 to ensure reproduction, he purchases her, and sets to work to breed from her. A dog 

 is selected, possibly simply because he writes Champion before his name, possibly (if the 

 breeder be exceptionally far-seeing) because he appears likely to correct the faults of the bitch, 

 regardless of the fact that each of them inherits, though each does not display, precisely the 

 same faults. He singles out and keeps the best puppy ; the rest are scattered to the winds. 

 The pup is perverse enough to obey the laws of Nature, and to grow up with the defects which 

 his sire and dam owe to a common ancestor. The bitch is condemned as worthless for breeding, 

 and the aspirant either gives up the attempt, or, if unusually persevering, tries another experiment 

 on precisely the same principles. What, I may be asked, should he have done? Now, no 

 paper instructions, nothing but care, patience, and experience, often dearly bought, will enable 

 a man to breed any sort of stock successfully. Still, there are a few plain rules, by observing 

 which a breeder will at least diminish his chances of failure at the outset. In the first 

 place, what an animal reproduces is not primarily its own individual peculiarities, but the 

 peculiarities of its family. If it is in-bred that is, if the sire and dam possess the same hereditary 

 type then it is almost sure to reproduce that type. If it is cross-bred that is, if it combines 

 more than one hereditary type, it will probably, though not certainly, reproduce the oldest 

 and most fixed. If it be an amalgam of a number of strains, it may reproduce anything. 

 These remarks, of course, only take into account the influence of one parent. That influence 

 may reign paramount, or it may be modified or wholly destroyed by the influence of the 

 other parent. If both the parents be of the same hereditary type, and that a well-defined 

 one, then and then only he may be pretty sure of the result. If they differ, we may get either 

 one type or the other, or possibly, a new variety, differing from either of the parent types. 

 In pure breeding then i.e, breeding from animals of the same type, and who derive that type 

 from a common stock lies our only hope of certainty. Here and there of course it is necessary 



