mR|S3 EKiM 



CHAPTER XXXVI 



The Scottish Terrier 



HOUGH undoubtedly a very old breed, the Scottish terrier 

 is quite modern so far as knowledge of the variety outside 

 of restricted sections of northern Scotland is concerned. 

 Before taking up the history of the Scottish terrier we 

 must first ask our readers to thoroughly understand that 

 not a word was ever written regarding this breed till about 1880. One 

 can find no end of information about the Scotch terrier, but that was a 

 different dog altogether. Dalziel in "British Dogs," 1880, expressed regret 

 that such a useful dog as the Scotch terrier had not been taken up and 

 made something of, and he described it as a rough-haired sandy dog, though 

 they came darker. Dalziel was a Dumfrieshire man, if we are not mistaken, 

 and described the dog just as we remember it from our boyhood. He 

 stood fairly well upon his legs and ran about fifteen pounds as a usual 

 thing. He was rough-coated all over, body and head, a somewhat bristly 

 coat that stood out and was dense as well. That was. the dog that was 

 everywhere known as the Scotch terrier. The brace of terriers drawn by 

 Smith gives a good idea of the dog, and so does Spink's Bounce in Stone- 

 henge's group illustration, shown in the introduction to the terrier family. 

 Chapter XXVL, only that there is a little too much lay down about his 

 coat. There is no doubt, however, that the term Scotch was decidedly an 

 elastic one and Lieut. Colonel Hamilton Smith gives no less than three 

 Scotch terriers, all differing, and not one the present-day Scottish terrier. 

 One looks like a drop-eared Skye, another like the low, rough black and 

 tan of England, while the head of Fury is more like the little rat killer that 

 Dalziel wrote about and we also knew. 



Landseer introduced small, short-haired terriers in some of his High- 

 land paintings, a mongrelly lot, such as St. John mentions in his " Wild 

 Sports of the Highlands," written about 1844, as accompanying the high- 

 land fox, or tod hunter " a miscellaneous tail of terriers of every degree." 

 St. John does not discriminate in his use of Skye and Highland in his 



S07 



