417 



CHAPTER XLV. 



THE YORKSHIRE TERRIER. 



" Don was a particularly charming specimen of the Yorkshire Terrier, with a silken coat of 

 silver blue, set off by a head and paws of the ruddiest gold. His manners were most insinuating, 

 and his great eyes glowed at times under his long hair, as if a wistful, loving little soul were trying 

 to speak through them." AXSTEY'S " STORY OF A GREEDY DOG." 



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. Brad- 

 ford, 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. 



The particular ingredients employed in 

 his composition have not been set down in 

 precise record. Obviously it was by no 

 haphazard chance that the finished product 

 was attained, but rather by studied and 

 scientific breeding to a preconceived ideal. 

 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 the original Aire- 

 dale. 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 re- 

 ducing the length. Again, a cross with the 

 Clydesdale, 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 probability the 

 Dandie Dinmonl 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. Selection and rejection must 

 have been important factors in the pro- 

 duction selection of offspring which came 



MRS. WM. SHAWS CH. SNEINTON AMETHYST. 



BY CH. ASHTON DUKE^JACKSON'S VIC. 



(w, 



EIGHT, 3 LB. 2 CZ. 



nearest to the preconceived model, rejection 

 of all that had the long body and short legs 

 of the Skye, the white colouring of the 

 Maltese, the drooping ears of the Dandie, 

 the wiry coat of the Black-and-tan. 



The original broken-haired Yorkshire Ter- 

 rier of thirty years ago was often called a 

 Scottish Terrier, or even a Skye, and there 

 are many persons who still confound him 

 with the Clydesdale, whom he somewhat 

 closely resembles. At the present time he is 

 classified as a toy dog and exhibited almost 

 solely as such. It is to be regretted that 

 until very lately the terrier character was 



53 



