THE ENGLISH MASTIFF. 



29 



Size is a quality very desirable in this 

 breed. The height of many dogs of olden 

 days was from thirty-two to thirty-three 

 inches. The height should be obtained 

 rather from great depth of body than 

 length of leg. A leggy Mastiff is very un- 

 desirable. Thirty inches may be taken as 

 a fair average height for dogs, and bitches 

 somewhat less. Many of Mr. Lukey's 

 Mastiffs stood 32 inches and over ; Mr. 

 Green's Monarch was over 33 inches, The 

 Shah 32 inches, and Cardinal 32 inches. 



The method of rearing a Mastiff has 

 much to do with its ultimate size, but it 

 is perhaps needless to say that the selection 

 of the breeding stock has still more to do 

 with this. It is therefore essential to 

 select a dog and bitch of a large strain 

 to obtain large Mastiffs. It is not so 

 necessary that the dogs themselves should 

 be so large as that they come from a large 

 strain. The weight of a full-grown dog 

 should be anything over 160 Ib. Many 

 Mastiffs have turned the scale at 180 Ib. 

 The Shah, for instance, was 182 Ib. in weight, 

 Scawfell over 200 Ib. 



I am not an advocate for forcing young 

 stock, and I have frequently noticed that 

 in the case of puppies of extraordinary 

 weight we have seldom heard of any of 

 them attaining any unusual size when 

 full grown. The fact is that these puppies 

 make their growth early in life and stop 

 growing just at the time other puppies are 

 beginning to fill out and develop. There 

 are, of course, exceptions to this. For 

 instance, Orlando weighed 140 Ib. when 

 only eight months old. A Mastiff puppy 

 of ten months old should have the appear- 

 ance of a puppy, and not of a full-grown 

 dog. A dog should go on growing until 

 he is three years of age, and many continue 

 to improve after that. 



Colour is, to a great extent, a matter of 

 taste. The two colours recognised at the 

 present time are brindle and fawn. The 

 former is considered by those who have 

 given the question most attention to have 

 been the original colour of the breed. 

 Black Mastiffs are spoken of as having been 

 known in years gone by, and occasionally 



we hear of a dog of this colour having been 

 seen even now. I have never come across 

 one myself, although I have often seen 

 brindle puppies so dark they might have 

 been mistaken for black ; nor can I call to 

 mind having heard in recent years of a 

 dog of this colour whose pedigree was 

 known. A correspondent in the Live Stock 

 Journal _spoke of having seen a black dog 

 of Mastiff type, which was not of pure 

 blood, and went on to say that " when I 

 was paying a visit to the Willhayne kennels, 

 in the summer of 1879, I remember Mr. 

 Kingdon showing me a coal-black bitch 

 of the Lyme Hall breed. She had not a 

 white hair on her, and I was surprised at 

 her colour. She was not at all large." 

 It is stated that Charles I. advertised for 

 a lost " Bob-tailed Black Mastiff," and 

 from the correspondence that took place 

 some years ago upon the subject of the 

 colour of Mastiffs, it is evident that black 

 was by no means an unknown colour at 

 one time. Red was another colour that 



MR. ROBERT LEADBETTER'S PRINCE SONDERBERQ, 

 BORN 1903, BY MELLNOTTE NELL 



was in evidence thirty or forty years ago, 

 but it has been allowed to die out, and I 

 have not seen a Mastiff of that colour, whose 

 pedigree could be depended upon, for many 

 years. By crossing blacks and reds it would 

 no doubt have been possible to produce 



