THE WEST HIGHLAND 
the rocks under and between which his 
quarry harbours, makes use of the small 
dog which will go under ground, to which 
the French name terrier has been attached. 
Towards the end of the reign of James 
the First of England and Sixth of Scotland, 
we find him writing to Edinburgh to have 
half a dozen “earth dogges or terrieres ” 
sent carefully to France as a present, and 
he directs that they be got from Argyll, 
and sent over in two or more ships lest 
they should get harm 
by the way. That was 
roughly three hundred 
years ago, and the King 
most probably would not 
have so highly valued 
a newly invented strain 
as he evidently did value 
the ‘“‘terrieres” from 
Argyll. We may take 
it then, I think, that 
in 1600 the Argyllshire 
terriers were considered 
to be the best in Scot- 
land, and likely enough 
too, seeing the almost 
boundless opportunities 
the county gives for the 
work of the ‘earth 
dogges.” 
But men kept their 
dogs in the evil pre-show 
days for work and not 
for points, and mighty 
indifferent were they whether an _ ear 
cocked up or lay flat to the cheek, 
whether the tail was exactly of fancy length, 
or how high to a hair’s breadth it stood. 
These things are sine qud non on the modern 
show bench, but were not thought of in 
the cruel, hard fighting days of old. 
In those days two things—and two 
things only—were imperatively necessary : 
pluck and capacity to get at the quarry. 
This entailed that the body in which the 
pluck was enshrined must be small and 
most active, to get at the innermost re- 
cesses of the lair, and that the body must 
be protected by the best possible teeth 
and jaws for fighting, on a strong and 
SPORTING DOGS DRAWN BY SIR EDWIN LANDSEER, R.A. 
SHOWING A WEST HIGHLAND WHITE TERRIER. 
WHITE TERRIER. 391 
rather long neck and directed by a most 
capable brain. It is held that feet turned 
out a little are better for scrambling up 
rocks than perfectly straight Fox-terrier 
like feet. In addition, it was useful to 
have your dog of a colour easy to see when 
in motion, though I expect that no great 
weight was laid upon that point, as in the 
days before newspapers and trains men’s 
eyes were good, asarule. Still, the quantity 
of white in the existing terriers all through 
(1839), 
the west coast of Scotland shows that it 
must have been rather a favoured colour. 
I have been asked to give an account of 
these dogs because I ventured to show 
them some years ago, and to bring before 
the general public the claims of this most 
ancient race. When first I showed in 
Edinburgh, an old gentleman came up to 
me and thanked me most warmly for having 
revived in his breast the joys of fifty years 
before, when he used to hunt otters on the 
shores of Loch Fyne with terriers just 
like mine, colour and all. I can now, alas, 
answer personally for their having been at 
Poltalloch sixty years ago, and so they 
were first shown as Poltalloch Terriers. 
