,
Was Walter Scott's first Jedburgh fee."

The terrier has a perfect, thorough, unappeasable instinct for, and
hatred to all kinds of vermin. He takes to rats and mice as naturally as
a cat. He will scent out their haunts and burrows. He will lie for hours
by their places of passage, and point them with the sagacity of a
pointer at a bird. He is as quick as lightning, in pouncing upon them,
when in sight, and rarely misses them when he springs. A single bite
settles the matter; and where there are several rats found together, a
dog will frequently dispatch half a dozen of them, before they can get
twenty feet from him. A dog of our own has killed that number, before
they could get across the stable floor. In the grain field, with the
harvesters, a terrier will catch hundreds of field-mice in a day; or, in
the hay field, he is equally destructive. With a woodchuck, a raccoon,
or anything of their size--even a skunk, which many dogs avoid--he
engages, with the same readiness that he will a rat. The night is no bar
to his vigils. He has the sight of an owl, in the dark. Minks, and
weasels, are his aversion, as much as other vermin. He will follow the
first into the water, till he exhausts him with diving, and overtakes
him in swimming. He is a hunter, too. He will tree a squirrel, or a
raccoon, as readily as the best of sporting dogs. He will catch, and
hold a pig, or anything not too large or heavy for him. He will lie down
on your garment, and watch it for hours; or by anything else left in his
charge. He will play with the children, and share their sports as
joyfully as a dumb creature can do; and nothing can be more
affectionate, kind, and gentle among them. He is cleanly, honest, and
seldom addicted to tricks of any kind.

We prefer the high-bred, smooth, English terrier, to any other variety.
They are rather more gentle in temper, and very much handsomer in
appearance, than the rough-haired kind; but perhaps no better in their
useful qualities. We have kept them for years; we keep them now; and no
reasonable inducement would let us part with them. A year or two ago,
having accidentally lost our farm terrier, and nothing remaining on the
place but our shepherd dog, the buildings soon swarmed with rats. They
were in, and about everything. During the winter, the men who tended the
horses, and cattle, at their nightly rounds of inspection, before going
to bed, would kill, with their clubs, three or four, in the barns