512 
in a record of the year I12I B.c., in which 
it is stated that the people of Liu, a country 
situated west of China, sent to the Emperor 
Wou-wang, a great dog of the Thibetan 
kind. The fact is also recorded in the 
Chou King (Chapter Liu Ngao), in which 
the animal is referred to as being four feet 
high, and trained to attack men of a strange 
race. Aristotle, who knew the breed as the 
Canis indicus, considered that it might be 
a cross between a dog and a tiger, and of 
what other dog was it that Gratius Faliscus 
SHORN_ COAT). 
THIBET MASTIFF (WITH 
IMPORTED FROM INDIA BY 
HR.H. THE PRINCE OF WALES IN 1906, 
Photograph by W. P. Dando, F.Z.S. 
wrote in his ‘‘Carmen Venaticum,” Sz 
gut seras alunt, genus intractabilis trae P 
This ‘‘ untamable wrath”’ remains a charac- 
teristic of the Thibet Mastiff to this day. 
Great size and a savage disposition have 
always been attributed to this dog. Marco 
Polo, who made an expedition into Central 
Asia and Mongolia, compared it in size 
with the ass, and one can imagine that 
Ktesias had these dogs in mind when, 
writing of his sojourn in the East, he de- 
scribed the Griffins that defended the high 
mountains north of Persia, as a kind of 
four-footed bird of the size of a wolf, with 
paws like those of the lion, the body covered 
THE NEW BOOK OF THE DOG. 
with black feathers, red on the chest. Let 
us substitute shaggy hair for feathers and 
we have the black and tan Thibet dogs, 
whose inhospitable reception of travellers 
invading the mountain fastnesses might 
well deter the stranger from inquiring too 
closely into the exact nature of their body 
covering. 
It is a credible theory that the Asiatic 
Mastiff, imported into Europe in the days 
of early intercommunication between East 
and West, became the ancestor of the old 
Molossian dog, and, consequently, a forebear 
of our own Bandog. This is the theory of 
Mr. M. B. Wynn, the erudite historian of 
the English Mastiff, and one sees no reason 
to dissent from it. 
The first Thibet dog known to have been 
brought to England was presented by 
George IV. to the newly instituted Zoological 
Gardens. Two very good examples of the 
breed were brought home from India by 
H.M. The King, in 1876, and one of the 
pair, Siring, was repeatedly pictured in 
canine literature in illustration of the true 
type of the breed, until a similar repre- 
sentative appeared in Mr. H. C. Brooke’s 
D’Samu. This last-named specimen was 
24 inches in height, and about 100 pounds in 
weight. He had a magnificent ruff and 
mane of outstanding hair, and in type he 
remains second only to Sir William Ingram’s 
Bhotean. He had been in England eight 
years when he died at the ripe age of fourteen. 
He was a good watch, but somewhat morose, 
wishing only to be left alone both by other 
dogs and by humans. Mr. Brooke informs 
me of the interesting circumstance that 
regularly in the month of October D’Samu 
took on a strange restlessness of disposition 
which lasted for about a fortnight. He 
would refuse food and would wander all 
night about his compound moaning plain- 
tively, and on several such occasions he broke 
down his fence and escaped. At other 
times a fence of thread would restrain him. 
The only reasonable inference to be drawn 
from this recurrent restlessness is that the 
dog’s nomadic instincts were asserting them- 
selves. His ancestral kith and kin are said 
to have been for generations migratory 
