thoroughly established himself in the affections of the great body of the
American people, so that his friends offer no apology whatever in calling
him the American dog, must possess peculiar qualities that endear him to
all classes and conditions of men, and I firmly believe that when all the
fads for which his native city is so well known have died a natural death,
he will be in the early bloom of youth. Yea, in the illimitable future,
when the historian McCauley's New Zealander is lamenting over the ruins of
that marvelous city of London, he will be accompanied by a Boston terrier,
who will doubtless be intelligent enough to share his grief. In reply to
the query as to who and what he is, it will be readily recalled that on
the birth of possibly the greatest poet the world has ever seen it was
stated:

"The force of nature could no further go,
To make a third, she joined the other two."

And this applies with equal force to the production of the Boston terrier.
The two old standard breeds of world-wide reputation, the English bulldog
and the bull terrier, had to be joined to make a third which we believe to
be the peer of either, and the superior of both. The dog thus evolved
possesses a type and individuality strictly his own, inherited from both
sides of the house, and is a happy medium between these two grand breeds,
possessing the best qualities of each. To some the name "terrier" would
suggest the formation of the dog on approximate terrier lines, but this is
as completely erroneous as to imagine that the dog should approach in like
proportion to the bull type. When the dog was in its infancy it was
frequently called the Boston bull, and then again the round-headed bull
and terrier, and later, when the Boston Terrier Club was taken under the
wings of the great A.K.C. in 1893, it became officially known as the
Boston terrier.