CHAT: TIM is Loan to ; since stamped o Ancient writers but, interesting references to the they bear po car ! CHAPTER IX. THE BULLDOG. TIME is known to play grim jokes with historical monuments, but it probably has never burlesqued anything more than it has our national emblem, the British bulldog. Evolved for a specific purpose-a purpose long since stamped out both by law and by sentiment— the present day examples can only be looked upon as the result of breeding for certain points not desired or found in any other kind of dog. That the bulldog can claim as great pretensions to antiquity as any other now so-called breeds is not to be denied; but to say that bulldogs are bred to-day on the same lines as they were even sixty years ago would be an assertion that could not by any evidence be defended. Ancient writers have been quoted ad nauseam, but, interesting as these extracts may be as references to the early history of dogs in general, they bear no coherent testimony that the animals they refer to had more than a faint resemblance to the recognised type of bulldogs in 1893. Evidence which is far more reliable is at our disposal in the pictures published towards the end of the last and the beginning of this century-the epoch when bull-baiting was in vogue—and, judging from these pictures, the bulldog of that time was but a phantom-like shadow of the animal the fin de siècle bulldog enthusiast has by patience succeeded in breeding. Thus to him who, nowadays, wishes either to breed or to own an up-to-date specimen, it will be so much useless and embarrassing learning if he hampers himself with any considerations as to the outline and general appearance of what has been handed down to him regarding the animals his ancestors looked up to as bulldogs. Should he decide upon breeding bulldogs he will find, in order to produce a specimen at all approaching the modern ideal, that, instead of wasting time in pondering over the old type, he will have to employ that particular style of dog which may at the moment be in fashion. He need have no misapprehension that the type in general will in the future change much, if at all; nor need he fear that the goal he is striving for will be advanced. For it must be remembered that the standard laid down for this breed has not materially altered during the last twenty years, though judges' decisions may have sometimes been at variance with, if not diametrically opposed to, the standard type. The very fact of there being now two bulldog clubs is a guarantee that no radical change in the standard will ever be permitted, as one or other of the clubs is certain to hover round so safe an anchorage as an established type. If either club sanctions what sensible men must know is a departure from what is correct, it is only reasonable to suppose that in the fulness of time that club will sink in public estimation. The miasma of the breed is that the bulldog in popular opinion has for so long been regarded as the butcher's able assistant and the ruffian's faithful companion; but, owing to the interest its peculiar conformation affords to the science of breeding, it yearly gains more ground in civilised society by attracting the attention of men of better education. However, before going right into the description of what a modern bulldog ought to be, some few particulars of his early history may be desirable, and it is said that the first record of bulldogs in England was in 1631, when one Prestwich Eaton, from St. Sebastian, wrote to George Wellingham, of St. Swithin's Lane, London, for a mastiff and two good |