In the recently issued edition of his work, "Stonehenge" has swept his pages clean of all such trumpery, recognising that the extraordinary intelligence really possessed by the colley needs not the embellishments of Munchausenism, and he has given the best descriptive article on colleys ever written. Yet still on the subject of colour I have "a crow to pluck " with him, presumptuous as it may be to " beard the lion in his den," as it were, and attack the king of canine writers in his very castle. He says: "A good deal of white is met with in some strains, and sometimes the tan is altogether absent, but, cceteris paribus, a black and tan colour without much white is highly preferred." Now, this gives the impression that the black and tan has some superiority over those with white, which is not the case; neither, as stated by "Stonehenge," are black and tan colleys the most commonly met with. That such is the case at shows I freely grant, but there a large number owe the colour to the setter cross, although in some cases this may be rather remote; but in the pastoral districts of Scotland and the North of England my own observations, confirmed by reference to numerous friends, convince me that black-white-and-tan colleys are the most numerous, and - chacon a son gout; but ceteris paribus, I say those with a white ring, or almost a ring, round the neck, a white chest, a white end to the tail, and a good broad dash of white down the forehead and face are greatly to be preferred.

That black and white colleys have been long recognised, the following advertisement, which appeared in the "Edinburgh Evening Courant" of 20th January, 1806, bears witness: "There was lost in Princess-street, on Saturday, the 28th Dec. last, a black and white rough colley or shepherd's dog."

I do not, however, rest my argument entirely either on my own observation nor upon the terms of an old advertisement. The ploughman-poet of Scotland had plenty of opportunities, and may be allowed to have been a capable observer, and of his own colley he says:

His breast was white, his toozie back Weel clad wi coat o' glossy black.

Strong as I consider the evidence of Burns in my favour, I have still my trump card to play, after which I hope the advocates of the black and tan, and "the fine line down the forehead not amounting to a blaze," will follow the advice of Joey Ladle to the musical party after hearing Madeline sing.

No less an authority than Dr. Gordon Stables says "the best dogs are tricoloured, black on the body, with tan points, and white collar and chest and forearms, and at times a blaze up the face and white tip to tail."

I have no prejudice against black and tan, but much prefer the tricolour, and I consider the white ring round the neck very characteristic of the breed, and indeed it seems not improbable that this very usual distinctive mark gave the name of colley to the breed, just as the sweetwilliam is the coll-me-quick of the garden from the ring of colour round its petals.

To pass on from the consideration of colour, I must say the colley's head has also been rather badly treated. So long as we had the black and rich orange tan in the ascendant we were bound to have with it - with a few exceptional cases - the high domed skull and more or less full forehead; but having got rid of one evil, there are some judges and writers clamorous to rush us into the opposite excess, and would have triangular heads, with the foreheads planed down to a perfect level and tapering jaws as long as those of a pike. These are some of the exaggerations created and nursed by those who can only take in one point of a dog at a time, and, having to say something, make that one point the all in all of their ephemeral creed. As an instance of the way extremes are run into, this desire for a long head as against the "chumpy" ones of the Gordon setter cross sort, some of the prize winners at the Alexandra Palace Show, July, 1879, had heads as long as deerhounds, and more the shape of a Jargonelle pear than what a colley's head should be.

Again, what an outcry there is if a colley is seen to carry his tail over his back when in the ring. What slaps with the chain and covert strokes with the stick the knowing ones give the poor caudal appendage, and all because ignorance puts its veto on the dog doing exactly what he ought to do.

The colley is a dog of great spirit, and when he meets his peers, be it at kirk, or market, or in the show ring, he gets his flag up, as much as to say, "I'm as good a dog as any of you." And for this, forsooth, the "inverted telescope" reviewers taboo the dog, and write him down as a ring-tailed mongrel. No true colley carries his tail lying curled on his back like a Pomeranian, but he should not trail it behind him like a Llewellyn setter or the brush of a done-up fox.

There has been an attempt made by recent writers to circumscribe the national character of this dog by calling him the Highland colley, as though he were peculiar to the north of Scotland. There appears to me to be even less justification for this than for calling the old English black and tan terrier the Manchester terrier, for Manchester has done something special in making the modern black and tan terrier what he is; but it is not so in the case of the Highlands of Scotland and the colley, and this dog is more properly described as the Scotch collie, even to the manner of spelling the word.

This dog is peculiarly Scotch, and as a pastoral dog originally more intimately connected with the lowlands, where he is still, I consider, met with pure in the greatest numbers, although now plentiful both in the highlands of Scotland and the northern counties of England, and, indeed, through the influence of dog shows and the rage for the breed in fashionable circles in London itself, where he always appears to me to have wandered out of his latitude.

The question of orthography may not be an important one, but I am of opinion collie is correct, as I find Dr. Ogilvie, in his "Imperial Dictionary," and Jameson, in his "Scottish Dictionary," both give that form of spelling, and I think it is not improbable that collie is merely the diminutive and familiar form of coll, as in all Scotch words the "ie " is thus used, as Will becomes Willie, and Lass Lassie. Bewick, in his "British Quadrupeds," indeed, had his own peculiar and original spelling of the word, which was coaly - pardonable in a book published in coaly Newcastle.