Dogs and All about Them

The colour, size, and shape of the original terriers are not indicated by the early writers, and art supplies but vague and uncertain evidence. Nicholas Cox, who wrote of sporting dogs in The Gentleman's Recreation (1667), seems to suggest that the type of working terrier was already fixed sufficiently to be divided into two kinds, the one having shaggy coats and straight limbs, the other smooth coats and short bent legs. Yet some years later another authority--Blome--in the same publication was more guarded in his statements as to the terrier type when he wrote: "Everybody that is a fox hunter is of opinion that he hath a good breed, and some will say that the terrier is a peculiar species of itself. I will not say anything to the affirmative or negative of the point." Searching for evidence on the subject, one finds that perhaps the earliest references to the colours of terriers were made by Daniel in his Field Sports at the end of the eighteenth century, when he described two sorts, the one rough, short-legged, and long-backed, very strong, and "most commonly of a black or yellowish colour, mixed with white"--evidently a hound-marked dog; and another smooth-coated and beautifully formed, with a shorter body and more sprightly appearance, "generally of a reddish brown colour, or black with tanned legs."