CHAPTER XLII 

 THE YORKSHIRE TERRIER 



THE most devout lover of this charming and beautiful terrier 

 would fail if he were to attempt to claim for him the distinction 

 of_ descent from antiquity. Bradford, and not Babylon, 

 was his earliest home, and he must be candidly acknowledged 

 to be a very modern manufactured variety of the dog. Yet 

 it is important to remember that it was in Yorkshire that 

 he was made Yorkshire, where live the cleverest breeders 

 of dogs that the world has known. 



One can roughly reconstitute the process. What the 

 Yorkshiremen desired to make for themselves was a pigmy, 

 prick-eared terrier with a long, silky, silvery grey and tan 

 coat. They already possessed the foundation in the old 

 English Black and Tan wire-haired Terrier. To lengthen the 

 coat of this working breed they might very well have had 

 recourse to a cross with the prick-eared Skye, and to 

 eliminate the wiry texture of the hair a further cross 

 with the Maltese dog would impart softness and silkiness 

 without reducing the length. Again, a cross with the Clydes- 

 dale, which was then assuming a fixed type, would bring the 

 variety yet nearer to the ideal, and a return to the black and 

 tan would tend to conserve the desired colour. In all pro- 

 bability the Dandie Dinmont had some share in the process. 

 Evidence of origin is often to be found more distinctly in 

 puppies than in the mature dog, and it is to be noted that 

 the'puppies of both the Dandie and the Yorkshire are born with 

 decided black and tan colouring. 



The original broken-haired Yorkshire Terrier of thirty years 



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