have an alert, gay appearance, coupled with
refinement, which requires a nice whip tail. The best colour is pure
white. A brindle spot is not amiss, and even a brindle dog is
admissible, but black marks are wrong. The coat ought to be close and
stiff to the touch. Toy Bull-terriers are not delicate as a rule. They
require warmth and plenty of exercise in all weathers.

* * * * *

The most elegant, graceful, and refined of all dogs are the tiny
Italian Greyhounds. Their exquisitely delicate lines, their supple
movements and beautiful attitudes, their soft large eyes, their
charming colouring, their gentle and loving nature, and their
scrupulous cleanliness of habit--all these qualities justify the
admiration bestowed upon them as drawing-room pets. They are fragile,
it is true--fragile as eggshell china--not to be handled roughly. But
their constitution is not necessarily delicate, and many have been
known to live to extreme old age. Miss Mackenzie's Jack, one of the
most beautiful of the breed ever known, lived to see his seventeenth
birthday, and even then was strong and healthy. Their fragility is
more apparent than real, and if they are not exposed to cold or damp,
they require less pampering than they usually receive. This cause has
been a frequent source of constitutional weakness, and it was
deplorably a fault in the Italian Greyhounds of half a century ago.

One cannot be quite certain as to the derivation of the Italian
Greyhound. Its physical appearance naturally suggests a descent from
the Gazehound of the ancients, with the added conjecture that it was
purposely dwarfed for the convenience of being nursed in the lap.
Greek art presents many examples of a very small dog of Greyhound
type, and there is a probability that the diminutive breed was a
familiar ornament in the atrium of most Roman villas. In Pompeii a
dwarfed Greyhound was certainly kept as a domestic pet, and there is
therefore some justification for the belief that the Italian prefix is
not misplaced.

In very early times the Italian Greyhound was appreciated. Vandyck,
Kneller, and Watteau frequently introduced the graceful figures of
these dogs as accessories in their portraits of the Court beauties of
their times, and many such portraits may be noticed in the galleries
of Windsor Castle and Hampton Court. Mary, Queen of Scots is supposed
to have been fond of the breed, as more surely were Charles I. and
Queen