417 
CHAPTER XLV. 
THE YORKSHIRE TERRIER. 
“Don was a particularly charming specimen of the Yorkshire Terrier, with a silken coat of 
silver blue, set off by a head and paws of the ruddiest gold. His manners were most insinuating, 
and his great eyes glowed at times under his long hair, as if a wistful, loving little soul were trying 
to speak through them.’’—ANSTEY’S “STORY OF A GREEDY Doc.” 
HE most devout lover of this charming 
and beautiful terrier would fail if he 
were to attempt to claim for him the 
distinction of descent from antiquity. Brad- 
ford, and not Babylon, was his earliest home, 
and he must be candidly acknowledged to 
be a very modern manufactured variety of 
the dog. Yet it is important to remember 
that it was in Yorkshire that he was made— 
Yorkshire, where live the cleverest breeders 
of dogs that the world has known. 
The particular ingredients employed in 
his composition have not been set down in 
precise record. Obviously it was by no 
haphazard chance that the finished product 
was attained, but rather by studied and 
scientific breeding to a preconceived ideal. 
One can roughly reconstitute the process. 
What the Yorkshiremen desired to make 
for themselves was a pigmy, prick-eared 
terrier with a long, silky, silvery grey and 
tan coat. They already possessed the 
foundation in the old English black and 
tan wire-haired terrier—the original Aire- 
dale. To lengthen the coat of this working 
breed they might very well have had recourse 
to a cross with the prick-eared Skye, and 
to eliminate the wiry texture of the hair a 
further cross with the Maltese dog would 
impart softness and silkiness without re- 
ducing the length. Again, a cross with the 
Clydesdale, which was then assuming a 
fixed type, would bring the variety yet 
nearer to the ideal, and a return to the 
black and tan would tend to conserve the 
desired colour. In all probability the 
Dandie Dinmont had some share in the 
process. Evidence of origin is often to 
be found more distinctly in puppies than in 
the mature dog, and it is to be noted that 
53 
the puppies of both the Dandie and the 
Yorkshire are born with decided black and 
tan colouring. Selection and rejection must 
have been important factors in the pro- 
duction—selection of offspring which came 
MRS. WM. SHAW'S CH. SNEINTON AMETHYST. 
BY CH. ASHTON DUKE——JACKSON'S VIC, 
(weicHT, 3 LB. 2 oz.) 
nearest to the preconceived model, rejection 
of all that had the long body and short legs 
of the Skye, the white colouring of the 
Maltese, the drooping ears of the Dandie, 
the wiry coat of the Black-and-tan. 
The original broken-haired Yorkshire Ter- 
rier of thirty years ago was often called a 
Scottish Terrier, or even a Skye, and there 
are many persons who still confound him 
with the Clydesdale, whom he somewhat 
closely resembles. At the present time he is 
classified as a toy dog and exhibited almost 
solely as such. It is to be regretted that 
until very lately the terrier character was 
4 
