467 
CHAPTER LIV. 
THE ITALIAN 
GREYHOUND AND THE MINIATURE COLLIE. 
“An English dog can’t take an atring 
But foreign scoundrels must be staring. 
I'd have your French dogs and your Spanish, 
And all your Dutch and all your Danish, 
By which our species is confounded, 
Be hanged, be poisoned, and be drownded ; 
No mercy on the race suspected, 
Greyhounds from Italy excepted.” 
HE most elegant, graceful, and re- 
fined of all dogs are the tiny Italian 
Greyhounds. Their exquisitely deli- 
cate lines, their supple movements and 
beautiful attitudes, their soft, large eyes, 
their charming colouring, their gentle and 
loving nature, and their scrupulous clean- 
liness of habit—all these qualities justify 
the admiration bestowed upon them as 
drawing-room pets. They are fragile, it 
is true—fragile as egg-shell china—not to be 
handled roughly. But their constitution is 
not necessarily delicate, and many have 
been known to live to extreme old age. Miss 
Mackenzie’s Jack, one of the most beauti- 
ful of the breed ever known, lived to see his 
seventeenth birthday, and even then was 
strong and healthy. Their fragility is more 
apparent than real, and if they are not ex- 
posed to cold or damp, they require less 
pampering than they usually receive. An 
American writer once gave elaborate instruc- 
tions as to the way to pick up an Italian 
Greyhound without breaking it, as if it 
were a Prince Rupert drop that would 
shatter to dust with the least touch. Such 
particularity is unnecessary. One would 
suppose that our American friend had come 
upon an unusually frail specimen that had 
been rendered weak by too much inbreed- 
ing. This cause has been a frequent source 
of constitutional weakness, and it was 
deplorably a fault in the Italian Greyhounds 
of half a century ago. Gowan’s Billy, who 
was celebrated about the year 1857 for his 
CHRISTOPHER SMART. 
grace and symmetry, and who was altogether 
a lovely animal, was a notorious victim of 
inbreeding. His grandsire, great grand- 
ROSEMEAD UNA AND ROSEMEAD LAURA. 
BRED AND OWNED BY THE BARONESS 
CAMPBELL VON LAURENTZ. 
Photograph by Russell. 
sire, g.-g.-grandsire, g.-g.-g.-grandsire, and 
g.-g.-g.-g.-grandsire were all one and the 
same dog. This is probably the record 
example of consanguinity. 
One cannot be quite certain as to the 
derivation of the Italian Greyhound. Its 
physical appearance naturally suggests a 
descent from the Gazehound of the ancients, 
with the added conjecture that it was pur- 
posely dwarfed for the convenience of being 
nursed in the lap. Greek art presents many 
examples of a very small dog of Greyhound 
type, and there is a probability that the 
