I have been for a great part of my life a keen lover of Skye Terriers, both Drop-and Prick eared. I do not know I have any preference for one sort over the other, and the subject of this sketch and I have had many a chat about dogs. Mr. Pratt must be one of the oldest Skye fanciers left amongst us. At one time he had the finest kennel, at any rate in England, of the breed, and told me he has bred more than a thousand of them in his time!

In the first volume of the Kennel Club Stud Book it will be found that some of the longest pedigrees for Skyes are those of his specimens, which were carefully bred from black and dark grey parents for many generations.

In the portrait I have received from this well-known fancier he will be seen wearing a Scottish bonnet, one hundred years old, and formerly belonging to Gordon Cumming (whose books on Big Game Hunting in Africa, etc., we have, some of us, read), accompanied by his Skye White Piper, whom he considered an albino, so rarely is pure white seen in that variety; and on this point the writer, in a long experience of Skyes, can say that he remembers only once before seeing a specimen of that colour, more than twenty-five years since, when he was travelling in the Island of Skye.

Mr. Pratt has had a great many good Skyes, mostly Drop-eared, but a few Prick-eared also, some of them winners of many prizes. He has sold more of them to members of the nobility and gentry for pets than to exhibitors, and had the honour of presenting one or more to Her late Majesty Queen Victoria, who generally kept some at the Royal palaces.

FACSIMILE OF ENVELOPE ADDRESSED TO MR. JAMES PRATT.

Mr. Pratt has always been a great stickler for straightforward dealing about dogs and their pedigrees, and has more than once taken up the cudgels against those he thought were not doing the right thing, one of his many quaint expressions being, "If we play dogs, play fair!"

He has a natural talent for painting, as I never heard he had any instruction, and have seen some very life-like portraits of some of his dogs from his brush.

Living a great part of his life near Hyde Park, and being in the daily habit of taking a team of six or more of his Skyes for exercise there, coupled together, he and his dogs are so well known that he showed me the envelope of a letter, I think from some one who wished to communicate with him from Norway, the address of which was merely, " The Man with the Dogs, Paddington, London, W." which duly reached him!

MR. JAMES PRATT WITH HIS SKYE TERRIER WHITE PIPER.

From photo y F. W. Wood, Bishop's Road W.

I think I have said enough to prove Mr. James Pratt is well entitled to take his place amongst Doggy People. Mr. Pratt has been kind enough to lend me, for reproduction, the facsimile of the envelope herein mentioned, which is quite unique in its way.