THE WEST HIGHLAND WHITE TERRIER. 
the bright, intelligent eye, the look of interest 
shown in the faces, is quite remarkable. 
There is another point of very great 
importance which not even the photograph 
can show—this is the wsder coat. 
Only the outer coat can be shown by 
such illustrations; this should be very soft 
on the forehead and get gradually harder 
towards the haunches, but the harsh coat 
beloved of the show bench is all nonsense, 
and is the easiest thing in the world to 
“fake,” as anyone can try who will dip 
his own hair into the 
now fashionable “ ant- 
393 
sort—I do not, of course, speak of bench 
dogs—earn their living following fox, 
badger, or otter wherever these went under- 
ground, between, over, or under rocks 
that no man could get at to move, and 
some of such size that a hundred men 
could not move them. (And oh! the 
beauty of their note when they come across 
the right scent!) I want my readers to 
understand this, and not to think of 
a Highland fox-cairn as if 1t were an Eng- 
lish fox-earth dug in sand; nor of badger 
uric ’ baths. 
The outer coat should 
be distinctly Jong, but 
not long in the “‘ fancy” 
or show sense. Still, it 
should be long enough 
to hang as a_ thatch 
over the soft, woolly real 
coat of the animal, and 
keep it dry so that a 
good shake or two will 
throw off most of the 
water; while the under 
coat should be so thick 
and naturally oily that 
the dog can swim 
through a fair - sized 
river and not get wet, 
or be able to sit out through a drenching 
rain guarding something of his master’s 
and be none the worse. 
This under coat I, at least, have never 
seen a judge look for, but for the working 
terrier it is most important. 
The size of the dog is perhaps best in- 
dicated by weight. The dog should not 
weigh more than 18 lb., nor the bitch more 
than 16 Ib. 
There is among judges, I find—with all 
respect I say 1t—an undue regard for weight 
and what is called strength, also for groom- 
ing, which means brushing or plucking 
out all the long hair to gratify the judge. 
One might as well judge of Sandow’s 
strength, not by his performances, but by 
the kind of wax he puts on his moustache ! 
The West Highland Terrier of the old 
50 
COL. MALCOLM'’Ss SONNY anpb SARAH. 
work as if it were a question of locating the 
badger and then digging him out. No; the 
badger makes his home amongst rocks, 
the small ones perhaps two or three tons 
in weight, and probably he has his “ hinner 
end” against one of three or four hundred 
tons—no digging him out—and, moreover, 
the passages between the rocks must be 
taken as they are; no scratching them a 
little wider. So if your dog’s ribs are a 
trifle too big he may crush one or two 
through the narrow slit and then stick. 
He will never be able to pull himself back— 
at least, until starvation has so reduced 
him that he will probably be unable, if 
set free, to win (as we say in Scotland) 
his way back to the open. 
I remember a tale of one of my father’s 
terriers who got so lost. The keepers went 
