34 THE IRISH ^^ERRIER. 



ance of their terriers, and if they were game, and good at destroying rats 

 and other vermin, tlrey would be kept and bred from, and as these terriers 

 were principally owned by farmers and cottiers, who kept one or two 

 roaming about their houses and farms, they were hardly likely to be very 

 select in the matter of breeding. Even to this day, in parts of ihe coun- 

 try, one comes across this old breed, as often as not with tails undocked, 

 and sometimes, alas ! showing a dash of greyhound blood. Many of 

 them, too, are brindled in color, and certainly smart, terrier-like animals. 



" I have several times been assured, by those from whom I sought 

 information, that a special strain of Irish terriers was kept in their fam- 

 ilies for generations, and they usually described them as wheaten colored, 

 open coated, with long, punishing jaws; and I was shown, by a friend 

 of mine (lately deceased), a game-looking wheaten-colored bitch, long 

 and low on the leg, with a very open coat, long, level head, with little or 

 no stop visible. 



" County Wicklow lays claim to a breed of what were so-called Irish 

 terriers. They frequently showed a blue shade on the back, were long- 

 in body and rather short on leg, and even so recently as the year 1887, 

 a class was given at the show held in Limerick, for silver-haired Irish 

 terriers, the specimens exhibited being a slate-blue color. They were 

 not, to my mind, a distinct variety, nor very terrier-like in appearance ; 

 and I believe the difficulty in getting a uniformity of type when breeding 

 from the very best blood obtainable is proof positive that more than one 

 strain was used in producing the present fashionable dog. 



" In the first collection I saw in the Exhil^ition Palace Show, held 

 in Dublin early in the seventies, there were scarcely two of the same 

 size or weight exhibited, and with few, very few, exceptions, they were a 

 rough lot. 



"The North of Ireland was the stronghold of the Irish terriers for 

 many a day, and still holds its own, with Mr. William Graham to aid it. 

 Even there I should doubt if a pure descent of Irish terrier could be 

 traced back for thirty years, as so long ago no one cared to go to the 

 trouble of breeding them to one uniform type ; and those who used 



