COLOUR. 37 



this attraction is not only dependent upon the superior beauty to 

 the eye, but upon the result of the examination of the pedigree- 

 list published by Messrs. Thacker and Welsh from 1840 to 1852. 

 In this list, ever since its commencement, these colours have been 

 found much more frequently than any other ; and therefore have 

 a statistical claim upon our notice. Dogs of these colours also 

 appear to be more hardy than the white with spots, or the lighter 

 fawns, and I am inclined to believe that black and red are the true 

 and original colours of the greyhound, from which all the others 

 are derived. The white is no doubt the result of domestication, 

 and is never found in any natural breed of dogs, even in the Arctic 

 regions, in which the only examples of white quadrupeds occur in 

 a wild state. Within 'the last ten years, however, the numerous 

 milk-white descendants of Mr. Campbell's c Scotland Yet,' who was 

 herself a pure white, have altered the proportions greatly, and 

 instead of a white greyhound being as it previously was a f rara 

 avis,' it is now so common that we often see, as in the last 

 Waterloo Cup, eight or ten per cent, on that colour. But taking 

 black, red, and white, as the three primitive colours of the 

 domestic dog, we shall find that all the others may be, and I 

 believe are, derived from their mixture, the only variation con- 

 sisting in the intermediate shade, which is sometimes uniform, as 

 in blue and fawn, sometimes spotted in large patches, or ticked in 

 small ones, and sometimes striped, as in the brindle, and in the black 

 (or blue) and tan. Thus a black dog put to a white bitch will 

 most probably produce either black and white, or white and black, 

 or blue, puppies ; next, a black dog put to a red bitch will produce 



