CHAPTER XV 

 THE IRISH WOLFHOUND 



IT is now some thirty years since an important controversy 

 was carried on in the columns of The Live Stock Journal 

 on the nature and history of the great Irish Wolfhound. 

 The chief disputants in the discussion were Captain G. A. 

 Graham, of Dursley, Mr. G. W. Hickman, Mr. F. Adcock, and 

 the Rev. M. B. Wynn, and the main point as issue was whether 

 the dog then imperfectly known as the Irish Wolfdog was 

 a true descendant of the ancient Cam's graius Hibernicus, 

 or whether it was a mere manufactured mongrel, owing its 

 origin to an admixture of the Great Dane and the dog of the 

 Pyrenees, modified and brought to type by a cross with the 

 Highland Deerhound. It was not doubted indeed, history 

 and tradition clearly attested that there had existed in 

 early times in Ireland a very large and rugged hound of Grey- 

 hound form, whose vocation it was to hunt the wolf, the red 

 deer, and the fox. It was assuredly known to the Romans, 

 and there can be little doubt that the huge dog Samr, which 

 Jarl Gunnar got from the Irish king Myrkiarton in the tenth 

 century and took back with him to Norway, was one of this 

 breed. But it was supposed by many to have become extinct 

 soon after the disappearance of the last wolf in Ireland, and it 

 was the endeavour of Captain Graham to demonstrate that 

 specimens, although admittedly degenerate, were still to be 

 found, and that they were capable of being restored to a 

 semblance of the original type. 



At the time when he entered into the controversy, Captain 

 Graham had been actively interesting himself for something 

 like a score of years in the resuscitation of the breed, and his 



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