200 DOGS AND ALL ABOUT THEM 



white was becoming frequent, and was much admired. A 

 strain of pure white was bred by James Hinks, a well-known 

 dog-dealer of Birmingham, and it is no doubt to Hinks that 

 we are indebted for the elegant Bull-terrier of the type that 

 we know to-day. These Birmingham dogs showed a refine- 

 ment and grace and an absence of the crook-legs and coloured 

 patches which betrayed that Hinks had been using an out- 

 cross with the English White Terrier, thus getting away further 

 still from the Bulldog. 



With the advent of the Hinks strain in 1862 the short-faced 

 dog fell into disrepute, and pure white became the accepted 

 colour. There was a wide latitude in the matter of weight. 

 If all other points were good, a dog might weigh anything 

 between 10 and 38 Ibs., but classes were usually divided for 

 those above and those below 16 Ib. The type became fixed, 

 and it was ruled that the perfect Bull-terrier " must have a 

 long head, wide between the ears, level jaws, a small black eye, 

 a large black nose, a long neck, straight fore-legs, a small 

 hare foot, a narrow chest, deep brisket, powerful loin, long 

 body, a tail set and carried low, a fine coat, and small ears well 

 hung and dropping forward." 



Idstone, who wrote this description in 1872, earnestly 

 insisted that the ears of all dogs should be left uncut and as 

 Nature made them ; but for twenty years thereafter the ears 

 of the Bull-terrier continued to be cropped to a thin, erect 

 point. The practice of cropping, it is true, was even 

 then illegal and punishable by law, but, although there were 

 occasional convictions under the Cruelty to Animals Act, 

 the dog owners who admired the alertness and perkiness of 

 the cut ear ignored the risk they ran, and it was not until the 

 Kennel Club took resolute action against the practice that 

 cropping was entirely abandoned. 



The president of the Kennel Club, Mr. S. E. Shirley, M.P., 

 had himself been a prominent owner and breeder of the Bull- 

 terrier. His Nelson, bred by Joe Willock, was celebrated 

 as an excellent example of the small-sized terrier, at a time, 



