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XEVIT. 
THE KING CHARLES SPANIELS. 
BY MRS. LYDIA E. JENKINS. 
“ Happiest of the Spaniel race, 
Painter, with thy colours grace : 
Draw his forehead large and high, 
Draw his blue and humid eye ; 
Draw his neck so smooth and round, 
Little neck with ribands bound ; 
And the mutely swelling breast 
Where the Loves and Graces rest ; 
me HAT’S ina name? That which 
we call a rose by any other name 
would smell as sweet,” said Juhet 
to her lover ; but a name may be so identi- 
fied with that for which it stands, and may 
embody fame, honour, ancestry, celebrity, 
memories, and so many characteristics, that 
to change it would constitute in some in- 
stances a real loss. 
So thought owners and breeders of the 
beautiful little King Charles Spaniel when, 
in 1903, the Kennel Club wished to relin- 
quish the ancestral and royal name, and 
let the varieties of the breed be called in 
future Toy Spaniels, differmg one from 
another in colour only. When all the 
efforts of the Toy Spaniel Club to avert 
this change seemed likely to prove futile, 
and many efforts had been made, King 
Edward VII. himself intervened by in- 
timating to the Kennel Club that it was 
his wish that the historical name should 
And the spreading even back, 
Soft, and sleek, and glossy black ; 
And the tail that gently twines, 
Like the tendrils of the vines ; 
And the silky twisted hair, 
Shadowing thick the velvet ear ; 
Velvet ears, which, hanging low, 
O’er the veiny temples flow.” 
—SWIFT. 
be retained—a wish which was, of course, 
acceded to. 
Even had the change been made there 
is no doubt that the old designation would 
never have been quite abandoned, and 
that there would always have been some 
people left who could not recognise this 
breed of dogs under any other title than 
that which had been its prerogative for 
centuries. 
In October, 1902, a meeting of the Toy 
Spaniel Club was held at the Crystal Palace, 
at which it was decided that as all four 
varieties of the English Toy Spaniel could 
be produced in one litter, they must be 
members of one family, and that these 
varieties had existed in the time of King 
Charles the First. A resolution was passed 
to ask the Kennel Club in future to register 
the whole breed as King Charles Spaniels 
of different colours, the existing names of 
the varieties at that time being King 
