Although the Bedlington Terrier is only a new- comer, I think he has a great future before him with regard to popularity and esteem. The breed can well afford to depend upon its merits to push its way to the front, and the more well-bred specimens get spread about, in the greater demand will the dog most assuredly be. The Bedlington I look upon as a farmer's friend and country gentleman's companion. No breed of Terrier can compare with him for stamina, fire, courage, and resolution. He will knock about all day with his master, busy as a bee at foxes, rabbits, or otters; and at night, when any other sort of dog would be stiff, sore, and utterly jaded, he will turn up bright as a new shilling, and ready for any game going. He takes to the water readily, has a capital nose, is most intelligent and lively, and, as I have said, as a rough and ready friend about the fields and woods he has no equal.

Despite the vast body of evidence adduced to clear up the question of the origin of this cross, I hold that the matter may yet be regarded as by no means satisfactorily determined. I have seen pedigrees of crack dogs of the breed extending over a period of one hundred years, but then one has no means of knowing what the dog was like whose name we see figuring as having lived in the last century. No doubt some famous dogs of the breed of old Northumberland Terriers were long ago located about Thropton, Rothbury, Felton, and Alnwick, and it is not at all unlikely that the Staffordshire nailmakers, who some eighty or ninety years ago were brought from the South and employed at Bedlington, crossed the pure-bred native Terrier with some of the stock they brought with them, having, probably, fighting purposes in view. But it does not matter how this clever and undoubtedly useful race has been produced; it is sufficient to know that we have it, and that it is as permanent and breeds as truly as any other cross we know of. At the same time, if the Staffordshire nailmakers made the cross with the intention of breeding a fighting animal, they failed, so far as raising an antagonist to the Bull-terrier is concerned. The Bedlington is as tenacious, as resolute, and as indifferent to rough usage as the professional gladiator he was pitted against; but he lacks the formidable jaw and the immense power of the Bull-terrier, and the combat is emphatically no part of his business.

The first show of Bedlingtons I can call to mind was got up by Henry Wardle, of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, a good judge, and an ardent admirer of the canine species. That show took place on April 12th, 1870, and the first prize was won by Thomas John Pickett, with Tip, a thorough game one, but I thought he had a dash of Bull in him. I would like to do justice to the ability and care displayed in those earlier show days of the Bedlington by Thomas Thompson, of Wideopen, and Joseph Ainsley, of Bedlington, who stood foremost as reliable judges of the strain, and as acknowledged depositories of almost all that was known concerning it, but I have not space at command to enter into the intricacies of pedigrees, and I must hasten on to mention two or three of the most famous prize-takers of the race. Mr. Pickett, who has bred Bedlingtons since 1844, had three champions, often since referred to by breeders, namely, Tear 'Em, Tyne, and Tyneside, all descended from Thomas Thompson's strain, and inheriting pedigrees of portentous length. Tyne was first shown at the Crystal Palace show in 1870, and went thence to Birmingham, where she was again not noticed; she was then sent to Manchester, but, from some mistake of the railway servants, was never taken out of her hamper. At Liverpool, to which show she was sent on, a similar mistake occurred ; but the committee of the show, becoming aware of the fact, sent Mr. Pickett a special prize. Despite this series of rebuffs, Mr. Pickett forwarded Tyne to the Glasgow show, when the judges pronounced her not to be a Bedlington at all. The Scotsman of March 2nd, 1872, however, in its notice of the show, remarked that she was by a very long way the best in the class in which she was exhibited. This was a case of doctors differing with a vengeance; and Tyne managed to stultify the Glasgow decision by making a round of brilliant victories at York, Kendal, Bedlington, Blaydon, Seaton Burn, and other district shows, and won twice at Durham - viz. in 1870 and 1871 - finally visiting the great Crystal Palace exhibition of 1872, and taking first prize in her class, which the Times of June 2nd, 1872, described as the best collection of Bedlingtons ever exhibited at any show. Tear 'Em was the hero of the original show at Bedlington in 1870, where, in a class of fifty-two competitors - a number seldom exceeded since, though on one of the occasions the late Colonel Cowen judged this breed at Birmingham he had an entry of over seventy - he was awarded first prize. Tyneside, a beautiful blue bitch, faultless in shape, coat, and colour, was placed first in a class of twenty-five at Bedlington in 1871; but in the Bedlington show of 1872 this distinguished branch of the family obtained its greatest triumph - Tyne (own sister to Tear 'Em) being placed first, with Tear 'Em second, and Tyneside third, in a class of twenty-three entries. Tyneside was inbred to a most curious extent, the name of Hutchinson's Tip occurring no less than five times in the course of her pedigree, while on the part of both sire and dam she is descended from such grand dogs as Bagille's Piper, Thompson's Jean, Burn's Twig, Jos. Shevill's Jean, Thompson's Boa Alley Tip, and Bagille's Nimble, etc. The dimensions of Tyneside were as follow: From lugs to tip of nose, 8in.; length of tail, 11½ in.; length of lugs, 5½in., breadth (tapering off in a filbert shape), 3m.; height from the claw to the shoulder blade, 14¾ in.; weight, 2olb.; size round the chest, 19½ in.; and forearm, 7 ½ in. So much for the Bedlingtons, and I may mention that most of them known to me are terribly inbred, and that the usual consequences often follow; also that many of them exhale an odour which, to say the least of it, is peculiar."