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loves: you win if you guessed "pets" and "museums". Also books, art history, travel, British punk, Korean kimchi, bindis, martinis, and other things TBD. I will always make it very clear if a post is sponsored in any way. Drop me a line at thepetmuseum AT gmail.com !

Wednesday, August 21, 2013

dogs of the old world: the short course

. . . It is well known that Great Britain and Spain have furnished the choicest breeds of dogs from the earliest ages: the British mastiff was in high estimation among the ancient Romans; the blood hound, the talbot or southern hound, the spaniel, including the setter, and the pointer, owe their origin to Spain; the spotted hound, or coach dog, came originally from Dalmatia, a province of European Turkey; the greyhound, or gazehound, from Ireland; the pug from Muscovy and the Dutch States (wait, those two places were not exactly neighbors so I hope the pugs weren't walking - Curator); the English bull dog is a cross breed between the last named animal and the old English mastiff; the shepherd's dog and the old English stag hound are said to be the most ancient of Albion's canine productions; the Scotch terrier is an original breed—the English terrier is doubtless a cross from the Scotch animal; the fox hound and the harrier are also cross breeds, but purely English in their growth; the Newfoundland dog tells its origin in its name. The Russian pointers, setters, and greyhounds, the lurcher, the water dog, and other varieties, will be duly noticed in the accounts given of their original breeds.

 --An introductory paragraph to "The Natural History of the Dog, in All His Varieties," Gentleman's Magazine, Volume 4 (Jan - Jul 1839; Philadelphia, William M. Burton), p, 113.  This must have been a series, as the dog breeds covered in the article above numbered all of three.

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