6 NOVEMBER 1926, Page 48

* * * SINS OF FANCIERS.

A question that is agitating a good many dog-lovers is the effect of high-breeding or in-breeding on the mind and body and general health of particular breeds. " The Fancy " has a good deal to answer for. The unfortunate bulldog (possibly the best-tempered of any of our dogs and very different in in this regard from the French Boule-Dogue) was at one time endowed by the breeders with so prognathous a lower jaw that its greatest quality of the old days was stolen from it. The one thing it could not do was to bite.. Any bull could ,,laugh at it. If it did succeed in getting the jaws together, it could be shaken off by a touch. Some of us were not a little grieved when the fox-terrier began to be adjudged of the first class in proportion to the length and straightness of its front legs and the length of its nose. The show dogs, as developed by the fanciers, were, and indeed are, more like whippets, fast and comely enough, but no better adapted than a greyhound for penetrating an earth. In short, the fox- terrier was rendered as unfit for tackling a fox as the bulldog for pulling down a bull.