186 DOGS AND ALL ABOUT THEM 



The colour, size, and shape of the original terriers are not 

 indicated by the early writers, and art supplies but vague and 

 uncertain evidence. Nicholas Cox, who wrote of sporting 

 dogs in The Gentleman's Recreation (1667), seems to suggest 

 that the type of working terrier was already fixed suffi- 

 ciently to be divided into two kinds, the one having shaggy 

 coats and straight limbs, the other smooth coats and short bent 

 legs. Yet some years later another authority Blome in 

 the same publication was more guarded in his statements 

 as to the terrier type when he wrote : " Everybody that is 

 a fox hunter is of opinion that he hath a good breed, and 

 some will say that the terrier is a peculiar species of itself. I 

 will not say anything to the affirmative or negative of the 

 point." 



Searching for evidence on the subject, one finds that per- 

 haps the earliest references to the colours of terriers were made 

 by Daniel in his Field Sports at the end of the eighteenth 

 century, when he described two sorts, the one rough, short- 

 legged, and long-backed, very strong, and " most commonly 

 of a black or yellowish colour, mixed with white " evidently 

 a hound-marked dog ; and another smooth-coated and beauti- 

 fully formed, with a shorter body and more sprightly appear- 

 ance, " generally of a reddish brown colour, or black with 

 tanned legs." 



Gilpin's portrait of Colonel Thornton's celebrated Pitch, 

 painted in 1790, presents a terrier having a smooth white coat 

 with a black patch at the set-on of the undocked tail, and black 

 markings on the face and ears. The dog's head is badly drawn 

 and small in proportion ; but the body and legs and colouring 

 would hardly disgrace the Totteridge Kennels of to-day. Fox- 

 terriers of a noted strain were depicted from life by Reinagle 

 in The Sportsman's Cabinet, published over a hundred years 

 ago ; and in the text accompanying the engraving a minute 

 account is given of the peculiarities and working capacities 

 of the terrier. We are told that there were two breeds : the 

 one wire-haired, larger, more powerful, and harder bitten ; 



