CHAPTER LXI 

 The Pug 



HAT prompted the men of Holland to develop the pug and 

 also the men of far away China ? That seems rather strange, 

 but not nearly so strange to many readers, who have be- 

 lieved the pug to have been an exclusively Dutch institu- 

 tion, as for them to conceive that the Hollanders were indebted 

 to China for the dog. We know that the Dutch were trading in the Orient 

 in the early part of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese and Spaniards 

 were also prominent in that trade and there was no particular objection to 

 foreigners or foreign trade at that time. Then we have in the pug a dog 

 which in his peculiarities has no counterpart in any European dog. The 

 bulldog has a short face, and was a square headed dog with cropped ears 

 and a straight tail when the pug was first known, and had an entirely dif- 

 ferent temperament from the pug. These two are the only European 

 dogs with anything approaching similarity and under no circumstances 

 can they be considered of the same family or coming from the same source. 

 On the other hand the strong resemblance between the smooth variety of 

 the Pekinese dog and the pug is too striking to be overlooked. 



That the Dutch and Chinese had very close business relations is a claim 

 easily supported. In the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts there are 

 several plates made in China to order for Hollanders bearing their coats of 

 arms, and in the Pierpont Morgan collection there is a good sized model of a 

 Dutch galliot. The catalogue so describes it but it has yards on both masts 

 and no gaff mainsail and what we should say was a jury foremast would in a 

 galliot be a mainmast; at any rate it is a Dutch vessel with Dutch sailors and 

 is a most creditable piece of work. The ascribed date is 1662 to 1722. 



While we have credited Holland with the original possession of the pug 

 we are not prepared to advance any proof of the statement. Indeed there 

 is more reason, so far as the proofs we have seen, to suppose that it is every 

 bit as much English as Dutch, but we need further information on the subject. 

 What we do know, however, is that none of the Dutch school of paintings at 



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