Dogs and All about Them

The animal, however, was neither a true terrier nor a true Bulldog, but an uncompromising mongrel; albeit he served his immediate purpose, and was highly valued for his pertinacity, if not for his appearance. In 1806 Lord Camelford possessed one for which he had paid the very high price of eighty-four guineas, and which he presented to Belcher, the pugilist. This dog was figured in The Sporting Magazine of the time. He was a short-legged, thick-set, fawn-coloured specimen, with closely amputated ears, a broad blunt muzzle, and a considerable lay-back; and this was the kind of dog which continued for many years to be known as the Bull-and-terrier. He was essentially a man's dog, and was vastly in favour among the undergraduates of Oxford and Cambridge. Gradually the Bulldog element, at first pronounced, was reduced to something like a fourth degree, and, with the terrier character predominating, the head was sharpened, the limbs were lengthened and straightened until little remained of the Bulldog strain but the dauntless heart and the fearless fighting spirit, together with the frequent reversion to brindle colouring, which was the last outward and visible characteristic to disappear. Within the remembrance of men not yet old the Bull-terrier was as much marked with fawn, brindle, or even black, as are the Fox-terriers of our own period. But fifty years or so ago white was becoming frequent, and was much admired. A strain of pure white was bred by James Hinks, a well-known dog-dealer of Birmingham, and it is no doubt to Hinks that we are indebted for the elegant Bull-terrier of the type that we know to-day. These Birmingham dogs showed a refinement and grace and an absence of the crook-legs and coloured patches which betrayed that Hinks had been using an out-cross with the English White Terrier, thus getting away further still from the Bulldog.