The first dog show that contained a class for sheep dogs was that at Birmingham in 1860, when the late Mr. W. Lort and the late Mr. J. H. Walsh ("Stonehenge") awarded the prize, which they gave to a "pure Scotch bitch," exhibited by Mr. W. Wakefield, of Hurley, Warwickshire, who thus had the honour of taking the first show bench prize offered for a shepherd's dog. There were but five entries then, now in 1892 it is not unusual to find over 100 entries at our modern shows, and at Liverpool in 1892 the total reached 260; whilst at Ayr, in Scotland, in the same year, no fewer than 395 entries were made. Several of the dogs, in both cases, competed in more than one class, but at the Scottish show there were 153 sheep dogs benched, and in 1893 the entries were 287, and the competitors 121.

Ten years after the institution of a class for them at Birmingham, there were but fifteen entries, and in 1870, the second prize was awarded to a dog, Cockie, which the present generation will recollect as perhaps as good an all-round specimen of his race as was ever led into a show ring. He then belonged to Mr. W. White, Sherwood Rise, Nottingham, and I think with very slight exceptions, no modern collie of the prevailing type with any pretensions to excellence, is without some of the Cockie blood in his veins. He was not only a show dog but a worker, and that he looked both is manifest from the fact that he won prizes under shepherd judges and under the ordinary "circuit" judges alike.

He took the cup at Carlisle in 1870, in a very strong class, farmer judges making the awards, and they all, as well as the spectators, said he was the best shepherd's dog they ever saw. Twelve years later, after some ups and downs, Cockie died peacefully at Great Bars, Birmingham, where he was well cared for by Mr. J. Bissel, who, a short time before, had purchased the poor dog for £10, this after he had been sold at a local mart for £3 only!

Other good collies of the earlier days of shows were Mr. J. Holmes' Bob, Mr. Henry Lacy's and Mr. John Henshall's Mec; Mr. C. W. Wilson's Malcolm, and following them came Mr. S. E. Shirley's Shamrock. The latter was bred in the north of Ireland, but there is little doubt his ancestors came from Scotland; his sire is given as Mr. McCall's Shep, his dam Mr. C. Glasby's Bess. From Mr. Shirley's kennels also came Tricolour, Trefoil, and Hornpipe.

With the advent of the Cockie strain, and he formed a strain although his pedigree was unknown, and that of Mr. Shirley's, great improvement in the appearance of the collie became apparent. Trefoil was the sire of Mr. Bissel's Charlemagne (the most successful of all collies both at the stud and on the bench), from Maud, a daughter of Cockie's. The continuity of type handed down from these strains, points to their purity in the first instance, and one may well wonder what our present collies would have been had Trefoil and Cockie never had existence, or their excellence have remained undiscovered.

Charlemagne, a sable and white in colour, made his first appearance in public at Curzon Hall in 1879, when, as a puppy, he received an honourable card only. Next year and for the four following years he won in his class and took the challenge cup likewise, nor was he beaten until the dark black-and-tan Rutland lowered his colours in 1885. Charlemagne was not much shown, so for an old dog he was comparatively fresh when he appeared at the Collie Club show in Holborn, in February, 1890, when he was once more given the prize as the best collie in the show. He died the following year, leaving behind a reputation as the most noteworthy collie of any time Rutland, the dog that beat Charlemagne, had been bred by the Rev. Hans Hamilton, and after changing hands several times, he was purchased by Mr. S. Boddington, of Birmingham, from the selling class at Warwick for £5, but just previously he had changed hands for half that sum. His new owner showed him well, and ultimately disposed of him to Mr. A. H. Megson, of Manchester, for £250.

From this time it seems that the collie gradually increased in money value, and as I write, a matter of a couple of hundred pounds for a perfect specimen would be considered by no means out of the way. At Manchester in 1888, the gentleman who had bought Rutland, paid £350 at auction for a young dog called Caractacus, that his breeder and exhibitor Mr. J. J. Steward, of near Rugby, had entered for £100. This dog did little good afterwards, nor was he a good one. Again did Mr.

Megs on open his purse, on this occasion paying, it is said, £530 to Mr. Boddington for Metchley Wonder, a dog that I had engraved for "The Collie or Sheep Dog," published by Horace Cox in 1890. Wonder has been a remunerative investment in many ways, and as a fact, there is no better dog living at the present time, though others have been bought and sold for even higher prices.

The Messrs. Stretch, of Ormskirk, have been peculiarly successful with their collies, and in addition to those bred by themselves, they have displayed excellent judgment in the purchase of others. From Mr. Hamilton they obtained Christopher, a sable dog that did so well in the change of kennels that Mr. Mitchell Harrison, of the United States, paid the equivalent (in other dogs and cash) of £1000 for this handsome son of Metchley Wonder and Peggie II. Since then, Messrs. Stretch have sold individual dogs for several hundred pounds apiece - and, with one or two others, are considered about the most successful collie breeders of the present generation. They have had Ormskirk Memoir, Ormskirk Or-mond, Ormskirk Golddust, purchased by them from Mr. Astley, who had claimed him for £50 at a small south country show, and many other dogs and bitches equally good. The extent of their kennels and the pitch to which collie breeding has reached, may be judged from the fact that it is said that during 1892, something like two hundred and fifty bitches visited their dogs for stud purposes alone. And there are other notable kennels of collies at Manchester, Newmarket, Stratford-on-Avon, and elsewhere, where results in a similar way, if not quite so extensive, are to the uninitiated somewhat astounding.