There can hardly have been a time since the period of the Norman Conquest when the small earth dogs which we now call terriers were not known in these islands and used by sporting men as assistants in the chase, and by husbandmen for the killing of obnoxious vermin. The two little dogs shown in the Bayeux tapestry running with the hounds in advance of King Harold's hawking party were probably meant for terriers. Dame Juliana Berners in the fifteenth century did not neglect to include the "Teroures" in her catalogue of sporting dogs, and a hundred years later Dr. Caius gave pointed recognition to their value in unearthing the fox and drawing the badger. "Another sorte, there is," wrote the doctor's translator in 1576, "which hunteth the Fox and the Badger or Greye onely, whom we call Terrars, because they (after the manner and custome of ferrets in searching for Connyes) creep into the grounde, and by that meanes make afrayde, nyppe and bite the Foxe and the Badger in such sorte that eyther they teare them in pieces with theyr teeth, beying in the bosome of the earth, or else hayle and pull them perforce out of theyr lurking angles, darke dongeons, and close caues; or at the least through cocened feare drive them out of theire hollow harbours, in so much that they are compelled to prepare speedie flyte, and, being desirous of the next (albeit not the safest) refuge, are otherwise taken and intrapped with snayres and nettes layde over holes to the same purpose. But these be the least in that kynde called Sagax." The colour, size, and shape of the original terriers are not indicated by the early writers, and art supplies but vague and uncertain evidence. Nicholas Cox, who wrote of sporting dogs in _The Gentleman's Recreation_ (1667), seems to suggest that the type of working terrier was already fixed sufficiently to be divided into two kinds, the one having shaggy coats and straight limbs, the other smooth coats and short bent legs. Yet some years later another authority--Blome--in the same publication was more guarded in his statements as to the terrier type when he wrote: "Everybody that is a fox hunter is of opinion that he hath a good breed, and some will say that the terrier is a peculiar species of itself. I will not say anything to the affirmative or negative of the point." Searching for evidence on the subject, one finds that perhaps the earliest references to the colours of terriers were made by Daniel in his _Field Sports_ at the end of the eighteenth century, when he described two sorts, the one rough, short-legged, and long-backed, very strong, and "most commonly of a black or yellowish colour, mixed with white"--evidently a hound-marked dog; and another smooth-coated and beautifully formed, with a shorter body and more sprightly appearance, "generally of a reddish brown colour, or black with tanned legs."