PREFACE
CHINA and Japan, their people and their customs, have lured the foreigner in his thousands to the making of many books. No writer, however, has thought fit to devote much study to their canine race, though in the Far East, just as in Europe, the dog has been for ages man's chief help and protector:
The rich man's guardian and the poor man's friend,
The only creature faithful to the end.[1]
Those who have, in passing, deigned to notice the existence of dogs in the Far East have paused only for brief comment, usually by way of grasping another stick to beat the Celestial for gastronomic eccentricity or superstitious delusions, and have given to the Eastern canine races scarcely the proverbial "dog's chance" of being considered better than universally mongrel.
It is not claimed for the following pages, whose original design included only the smaller races of Eastern dogs, that they enumerate all the existing breeds, or that they deal conclusively with any one of them. China alone is a vast country in which geographical difficulties render comprehensive study difficult. It is hoped, nevertheless, that there has been laid a foundation upon which further investigation may be firmly based, and that the researches made may assist in the identification of new species as well as the preservation of certain breeds which, like the St. Bernard in Europe, now run the risk of following the Irish wolfhound and the hard-worked turnspit dog of our great-grandfathers, to extinction.
- ↑ Inscription on the monument to a Newfoundland dog. Byron.
