One can roughly reconstitute the process.  What the Yorkshiremen desired to make for themselves was a pigmy, prick-eared terrier with a long, silky, silvery grey and tan coat.  They already possessed the foundation in the old English Black and Tan wire-haired Terrier.  To lengthen the coat of this working breed they might very well have had recourse to a cross with the prick-eared Skye, and to eliminate the wiry texture of the hair a further cross with the Maltese dog would impart softness and silkiness without reducing the length.  Again, a cross with the Clydesdale, which was then assuming a fixed type, would bring the variety yet nearer to the ideal, and a return to the black and tan would tend to conserve the desired colour.  In all probability the Dandie Dinmont had some share in the process.  Evidence of origin is often to be found more distinctly in puppies than in the mature dog, and it is to be noted that the puppies of both the Dandie and the Yorkshire are born with decided black and tan colouring.

The original broken-haired Yorkshire Terrier of thirty years ago was often called a Scottish Terrier, or even a Skye, and there are many persons who still confound him with the Clydesdale, whom he somewhat closely resembles.  At the present time he is classified as a toy dog and exhibited almost solely as such.  It is to be regretted that until very lately the terrier character was being gradually bred out of him, and that the perkiness, the exuberance and gameness which once distinguished him as the companion of the Yorkshire operative, was in danger of being sacrificed to the desire for diminutive size and inordinate length of coat.

Perhaps it would be an error to blame the breeders of Yorkshire Terriers for this departure from the original type as it appeared, say, about 1870.  It is necessary to take into consideration the probability that what is now called the old-fashioned working variety was never regarded by the Yorkshiremen who made him as a complete and finished achievement.  It was possibly their idea at the very beginning to produce just such a diminutive dog as is now to be seen in its perfection at exhibitions, glorying in its flowing tresses of steel blue silk and ruddy gold; and one must give them full credit for the patience and care with which during the past forty years they have been steadily working to the fixed design of producing a dwarfed breed which should excel all other breeds in the length and silkiness of its robe.  The extreme of cultivation in this particular quality was reached some years ago by Mrs. Troughear, whose little dog Conqueror, weighing 5-1/2 lb., had a beautiful enveloping mantle of the uniform length of four-and-twenty inches.