THE BULLDOG. 165 



size, taking into consideration tie difference in the respective weights of their whole 

 bodies. However, de mortuis nil nisi bonum, and I should not have alluded to 

 this asserted deficiency except for the purpose of considering size per se in this 

 breed, of which, as I think, too great importance has been made. 



Tip to the stoppage of the above-mentioned amusements, which are now 

 generally stigmatised as brutal, the bulldog might justly be estimated by the points 

 he exhibited which were best adapted to the office he was required to fulfil. At 

 present he is " out of place," and is only wanted to impart some portion of his 

 extraordinary courage to other breeds; and here, indeed, the demand is more 

 theoretical than practical, as the crosses in which he has been used are now 

 established ; and it is very seldom indeed that a new infusion of his blood is 

 required. These crosses are chiefly that with the mastiff, resulting in the keeper's 

 night dog ; with the greyhound, in which after several generations the cross retains 

 a certain degree of additional courage and power of bearing punishment ; and with 

 the terrier, the result of which, after many generations, is the modern bull terrier 

 one of the most companionable of all the dogs of the present day, and gradually 

 creeping into favour with the public. In the cross with the greyhound the peculiar 

 shapes of the bulldog are soon lost in the elegant lines of the longtail ; and this 

 bears strongly on another point in his natural history, to which I shall now allude. 

 Before proceeding to that subject I may, however, wind up the present one by 

 stating that, for the reasons given above, the bulldog is only to be regarded as a 

 remarkable curiosity in natural history ; but as such it would be a great pity to 

 lose him. 



A warm controversy has long been maintained among dog fanciers as to the 

 antiquity of the bulldog ; but the above-mentioned fact would serve to show that 

 the greyhound, at all events, is the older and purer variety of dog, since it is 

 admitted by all experienced breeders that whenever a cross is attempted between 

 two animals of a different strains, the older and purer strain very soon shows and 

 maintains a marked predominance. In my first attempt at defining our various 

 breeds of dogs, published in the year 1859, I describe a series of crosses made by 

 the late Mr. Hanley, who was an enthusiastic courser of that period, with a view 

 to further improve the greyhound by a second infusion of bull blood, which 

 had previously been found advantageous by Lord Orford and others. Putting a 

 high-bred bull-dog "Chicken" (by Burn's Turk out of sister to Viper) to a greyhound 

 bitch, the produce showed very little of the bull, having not the slightest vestige of 

 " stop," no lip, and a pointed muzzle, with a body nearly as light as that of the 

 dam. The produce of the next cross with the greyhound were wholly greyhound- 

 like in appearance, but, though they were moderately fast, they could not stay a 

 course, and this defect continued to the last, when the experiment was terminated 

 in the sixth generation by Mr. Hanley's death. His want of success has most 

 probably prevented a repetition of the cross ; but, as far as one example goes, it 

 tends to show that the bulldog is not, what many of his admirers contend he is 

 the oldest and purest breed of modern dogs. 



Soon after the enforced cessation of bull-baiting, the breeding of bulldogs was 



