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CHAPTER 
XXXIV. 
THE SMOOTH FOX-TERRIER. 
BY DESMOND O’CONNELL. 
“The word friend does not exactly depict the dog’s affectionate worship. . . . He 
ts our intimate and impassioned slave, whom nothing discourages, whom nothing 
vepels, whose ardent trust and love nothing can impatir.’—MAURICE MAETERLINCK. 
the Fox-terrier as we know him to- 
day would be of no interest to the 
general reader, and would entail the task 
of tracing back the several heterogeneous 
sources from which he sprang. It is a 
matter of very little moment whether he 
owes his origin to the white English Ter- 
rier or to the Bull-terrier crossed with 
the Black-and-tan, or whether he _ has 
a mixture of Beagle blood in his compo- 
sition, so it will suffice to take him as 
he emerged from the chaos of mongrel- 
dom about the middle of the last cen- 
tury, rescued in the first instance by the 
desire of huntsmen or masters of well- 
known packs to produce a terrier some- 
what in keeping with their hounds; and, 
in the second place, to the advent of dog 
shows. Prior to that time any dog capable, 
from his size, conformation, and pluck, of 
going to ground and bolting his fox was a 
Fox-terrier, were he rough or smooth, black, 
brown, or white. 
The starting-point of the modern Fox- 
terrier dates from about the ’sixties, and 
no pedigrees before that—and many, I fear, 
of a later time—are worth considering. 
From three dogs then well known—Old 
Jock, Trap, and Tartar—he claims descent ; 
and, thanks to the Fox-terrier Club and 
the great care taken in compiling their 
stud-books, he can be brought down to 
to-day. Of these three dogs Old Jock 
was undoubtedly more of a terrier than 
the others. It is a moot point whether he 
was bred, as stated in most records of the 
time, by Captain Percy Williams, master 
of the Rufford, or by Jack Morgan, hunts- 
ae r attempt to set forth the origin of 
43 
man to the Grove; it seems, however, 
well established that the former owned his 
sire, also called Jock, and that his dam, 
Grove Pepper, was the property of Morgan. 
He first came before the public at the 
Birmingham show in 1862, where, shown 
by Mr. Wootton, of Nottingham, he won 
first prize. He subsequently changed hands 
several times, till he became the property 
of Mr. Murchison, in whose hands he died 
in the early ’seventies. He was exhibited 
for the last time at the Crystal Palace in 
1870, and though then over ten years old 
won second to the same owner’s Trimmer. 
At his best he was a smart, well-balanced 
terrier, with perhaps too much daylight 
under him, and wanting somewhat in jaw 
power; but he showed far less of the 
Bull-terrier type than did his contemporary 
Tartar. 
This dog’s antecedents were very ques- 
tionable, and his breeder is given as Mr. 
Stevenson, of Chester, most of whose dogs 
were Bull-terriers pure and simple, save 
that they had drop ears and short sterns, 
being in this respect unlike old Trap, 
whose sire is generally supposed to have 
been a Black-and-tan terrier. This dog 
came from the Oakley kennels, and he was. 
supposed to have been bred by a miller 
at Leicester. However questionable the 
antecedents of these three terriers may 
have been, they are undoubtedly the 
progenitors of our present strain, and from 
them arose the kennels that we have to- 
day. 
Mention has been made of Mr. Murchison, 
and to him we owe in a great measure 
the start in popularity which since the 
