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Sydenham Edwards, and published in 1800. describes our terriers more fully than previous writers, but much in the same strain. His note about the so-called "Tumbler" is specially interesting. He says it was the Vertagris of Raii and others, and so called because it used "stratagem in taking its prey, tumbling and playing about until the animal it sought to catch came within reach." I take this to be something of a fable, and although such a faculty is possessed by the fox, it is a deception a domestic animal would never have occasion to acquire. Still, on the face of such a statement, some writers have regretted that a variety of the dog possessing such extraordinary characteristics has been lost to us.

Edwards goes on to say of terriers that "The most distinct varieties are the crooked-legged and straight-legged; their colours generally black, with tanned legs and muzzles, a spot of the same colour over each eye; though they are sometimes red fallow or white and pied. The white kind have been in request of late years. The ears are short, some erect, others pendulous; these and part of the tail are usually cut off; some rough and some smooth-haired. Many sportsmen prefer the wirehaired, supposing them to be the harder biters, but this is not always the case.

The

terrier is querulous, fretful, and irascible, high spirited and alert when brought into action; if he has not unsubdued perseverance like the bulldog, he has rapidity of attack, managed with art and sustained with spirit; it is not what he will bear, but what he will inflict. His action protects himself, and his bite carries death to his opponents; he dashes into the hole of the fox, drives him from his recesses, or tears him to pieces in his stronghold; and he forces the reluctant, stubborn badger into light. As his courage is great, so is his genius extensive; he will trace with the foxhounds, hunt with the beagle, find for the greyhound, or beat with the spaniel. Of wild cats, martens, pole-cats, weasels, and rats, he is the vigilant and determined enemy; he drives the otter from the rocky clefts on the banks of the rivers, nor declines the combat in a new element."

At that time, and a couple of centuries earlier, the reader must not expect the terriers to have been shapely, handsomely marked animals like the varieties of our present day. Possibly any little dog that "Caius, the profound clerk and ravenous devourer of learning," had running at his heels was black or brown coloured, long-bodied, on short legs, the latter may be more or less crooked; and, if he were produced by a cross between "the mongrel

mastiff and the beagle," his weight might be nearer 40lb. than 15lb., the latter no doubt the most useful size for underground purposes.

Old pictures of terriers dating back 300 years illustrate cross-bred looking creatures, some of them bearing more or less the distinctive characteristic of the turn-spit. Others indicate a considerable trace of hound blood, but not one, so far as the writer has come across, is hound marked, or bears any more white than is usually found on the chest or feet of any dog.

The Earl of Monteith over two centuries ago had an excellent strain of terriers, good at vermin of all kinds, but especially useful as fox killers. It has been said that James I. possessed some of these little dogs. That this sometimes called "most unkingly of monarchs" kept hounds is a matter of history, but whether he worked the terriers to assist them we are not told. Long before James's time, dogs had been found useful in conjunction with nets for the purpose of catching foxes, also to kill them as vermin. The wardrobe accounts of Edward I. show the following entries: "Anno 1299 and 1300. Paid to William de Foxhunte, the King's huntsman of foxes in divers forests and parks for his own wages, and the wages of his two boys to take care of the dogs, £9 3s." "Paid to the same for the keep of

twelve dogs belonging to the King," &c.

"Paid

to the same for the expense of a horse to carry the nets."

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Perhaps more to the purpose than this extract is the copy of an old engraving which lies before me at the present time entitled James I. Hawking." Fawning at the feet of the monarch are four dogs, evidently terriers, though some persons might consider them beagles. They are certainly terrier-shaped in heads and sterns, though the dog most distinctly shown is hound marked, and possesses larger ears than the others. One in the corner, evidently almost or quite white, possesses what at the present time would be called well-shaped, terrier-like head," and, although one ear is carried rather wide from the skull, the other drops nicely.

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With the commencement of the past century, and towards the close of 1700, more was written about terriers, and, as useful little dogs, they were gradually becoming appreciated. Beckford alludes to two black or white terriers, and from these two varieties white ones with black marks could easily be produced. The same author mentions a strain of terriers so like a fox in colour that "awkward people frequently mistake the one for the other."

There were in the possession of the late Captain Keene two paintings by F. Sartorius, dated 1796, the one "Viper," a white terrier with black or black and tan marks on his body. It is gazing at a fox in a tree. The other represents two terriers, one of which is entirely white, the second has a black and tan patch on the right eye, and a black mark on the right side. The terriers in these pictures are unlike those Reinagle drew three or four years later, and which are alluded to on another page, but they certainly indicate that there were terriers at that period marked like our modern fox terriers, although it is generally understood, and I believe correctly, that the common fox terrier of a hundred years since and earlier was black and tan in colour, such as De Wilde had engraved in 1806, and alluded to in the chapter on the fox terrier.

Between the years 1800 and 1815, an unusually large number of sporting books and works on hunting and dogs were published, all of which dealt more or less with terriers. "The Sporting Dictionary," 1803, says, "Terriers of even the best blood are now bred of all colours-red, black with tan faces, flanks, feet, and legs; brindled, sandy, some few brown pied, white pied, and pure white; as well as one sort of each colour rough and white-haired, the other soft and smooth; and,

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