. HAT prompted the men of Holland to develop the pug and also the men of far away China ? That seems rather strange, but not nearly so strange to many readers, who have be- lieved the pug to have been an exclusively Dutch institu- tion, as for them to conceive that the Hollanders were indebted to China for the dog. We know that the Dutch were trading in the Orient in the early part of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese and Spaniards were also prominent in that trade and there was no particular objection to foreigners or foreign trade at that time. Then we have in the pug a dog which in his
. HAT prompted the men of Holland to develop the pug and also the men of far away China ? That seems rather strange, but not nearly so strange to many readers, who have be- lieved the pug to have been an exclusively Dutch institu- tion, as for them to conceive that the Hollanders were indebted to China for the dog. We know that the Dutch were trading in the Orient in the early part of the sixteenth century. The Portuguese and Spaniards were also prominent in that trade and there was no particular objection to foreigners or foreign trade at that time. Then we have in the pug a dog which in his peculiarities has no counterpart in any European dog. The bulldog has a short face, and was a square headed dog with cropped ears and a straight tail when the pug was first known, and had an entirely dif- ferent temperament from the pug. These two are the only European dogs with anything approaching similarity and under no circumstances can they be considered of the same family or coming from the same source. On the other hand the strong resemblance between the smooth variety of the Pekinese dog and the pug is too striking to be overlooked. That the Dutch and Chinese had very close business relations is a claim easily supported. In the Metropolitan Museum of Fine Arts there are several plates made in China to order for Hollanders bearing their coats of arms, and in the Pierpont Morgan collection there is a good sized model of a Dutch galliot. The catalogue so describes it but it has yards on both masts and no gaff mainsail and what we should say was a jury foremast would in a galliot be a mainmast; at any rate it is a Dutch vessel with Dutch sailors and is a most creditable piece of work. The ascribed date is 1662 to 1722. While we have credited Holland with the original possession of the pug we are not prepared to advance any proof of the statement. Indeed there is more reason, so far as the proofs we have seen, to suppose that it is every bit as much English as Dutch, but we
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Keywords: ., bo, bookcentury1900, bookdecade1900, booksubjectdogs, bookyear1906
