CHAPTER XXI 
THe DaLMATIAN 
=a] I is passing strange how such a man as Buffon came to name 
jj the Dalmatian the Bengal Harrier, and Youatt was as bad 
when he lumped him in with the Great Dane—the Danish 
dog, as he was called at that time—as only differing in 
size. The Dalmatian is a dog of ancient lineage and with 
as straight a record as almost any dog. He was the hound that came from 
Dalmatia, and there is little reason to doubt that he was of the same class 
of hound that the pointer emanated from. Even to this day they have 
very much in common, in appearance, habits and disposition, and the 
Dalmatian is by no means a bad shooting dog, when any attention is paid 
to his training. 
Spotted dogs were known in Egypt. The illustration of dogs in the 
frontispiece of Part I., showing a number of dogs which were received as 
tribute, should have shown the fore leg of the farther dog in the front row 
as spotted, but the spots were omitted by the artist who copied the group in 
line drawing only. Stonehenge points out that quite a good many black- 
and-white pointers, while not marked so symmetrically as are Dalmatians, 
could doubtless be much improved in that respect if attention was paid to 
marking. All ticked dogs are usually heavily marked about the head, and 
one of the difficulties with the Dalmatian is to avoid heavily marked ears, 
which are nowadays objected to. In descriptions published earlier in the 
nineteenth century tan cheeks were spoken of, and within the past thirty 
years one of the recognised colours, the one placed second in point of merit 
by Stonehenge and considered very desirable by Dalziel, was the black- 
spotted dog with liver ticks on the legs. These were by no means uncom- 
mon thirty years ago, and were thought equally good if not better than the 
entirely black spotted. Why the Dalmation Clubs of England should 
have barred this liver spotting on the legs is not quite plain, for the new 
fanciers certainly do not know any more about the breed than those who 
knew them at that period. We remember buying a Dalmatian some 
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