Dogs and All About Them | Page 6

by
selection that they have come to be commonly accepted as native
breeds. Some are protected from the claim that they are indigenous by
the fact that their origin is indicated in their names. No one would
pretend that the St. Bernard or the Newfoundland, the Spaniel or the
Dalmatian, are of native breed. They are alien immigrants whom we
have naturalised, as we are naturalising the majestic Great Dane, the
decorative Borzoi, the alert Schipperke, and the frowning Chow Chow,
which are of such recent introduction that they must still be regarded as
half-acclimatised foreigners. But of the antiquity of the Mastiff there
can be no doubt. He is the oldest of our British dogs, cultivated in these
islands for so many centuries that the only difficulty concerning his
history is that of tracing his descent, and discovering the period when
he was not familiarly known.
It is possible that the Mastiff owes his origin to some remote ancestor
of alien strain. The Assyrian kings possessed a large dog of decided
Mastiff type, and used it in the hunting of lions. It is supposed by many
students that the breed was introduced into early Britain by the
adventurous Phoenician traders who, in the sixth century B.C., voyaged
to the Scilly Islands and Cornwall to barter their own commodities in
exchange for the useful metals. Knowing the requirements of their
barbarian customers, these early merchants from Tyre and Sidon are
believed to have brought some of the larger pugnaces, which would be
readily accepted by the Britons to supplant, or improve, their
courageous but undersized fighting dogs.
In Anglo-Saxon times every two villeins were required to maintain one

of these dogs for the purpose of reducing the number of wolves and
other wild animals. This would indicate that the Mastiff was recognised
as a capable hunting dog; but at a later period his hunting instincts were
not highly esteemed, and he was not regarded as a peril to preserved
game; for in the reign of Henry III. the Forest Laws, which prohibited
the keeping of all other breeds by unprivileged persons, permitted the
Mastiff to come within the precincts of a forest, imposing, however, the
condition that every such dog should have the claws of the fore-feet
removed close to the skin.
The name Mastiff was probably applied to any massively built dog. It
is not easy to trace the true breed amid the various names which it
owned. Molossus, Alan, Alaunt, Tie-dog, Bandog (or Band-dog), were
among the number. The names Tie-dog and Bandog intimate that the
Mastiff was commonly kept for guard, but many were specially trained
for baiting bears, imported lions, and bulls.
There is constant record of the Mastiff having been kept and carefully
bred for many generations in certain old English families. One of the
oldest strains of Mastiffs was that kept by Mr. Legh, of Lyme Hall, in
Cheshire. They were large, powerful dogs, and longer in muzzle than
those which we are now accustomed to see. Another old and valuable
strain was kept by the Duke of Devonshire at Chatsworth. It is to these
two strains that the dogs of the present day trace back.
Mr. Woolmore's Crown Prince was one of the most celebrated of
Mastiffs. He was a fawn dog with a Dudley nose and light eye, and was
pale in muzzle, and whilst full credit must be given to him for having
sired many good Mastiffs, he must be held responsible for the faults in
many specimens of more recent years. Unfortunately, he was
indiscriminately bred from, with the result that in a very short time
breeders found it impossible to find a Mastiff unrelated to him.
It is to be deplored that ever since his era there has been a perceptible
diminution in the number of good examples of this fine old English
breed, and that from being an admired and fashionable dog the Mastiff
has so declined in popularity that few are to be seen either at
exhibitions or in breeders' kennels. At the Crystal Palace in 1871 there

were as many as sixty-three Mastiffs on show, forming a line of
benches two hundred yards long, and not a bad one among them;
whereas at a dog show held twenty-five years later, where more than
twelve hundred dogs were entered, not a single Mastiff was benched.
The difficulty of obtaining dogs of unblemished pedigree and
superlative type may partly account for this decline, and another reason
of unpopularity may be that the Mastiff requires so much attention to
keep him in condition that without it he is apt to become indolent and
heavy. Nevertheless, the mischief of breeding too continuously from
one strain such as that of Crown Prince has to some extent been
eradicated, and we have had many