The English Mastiff is a breed of large dog. National kennel clubs, including the United Kingdom's Kennel Club and the American Kennel Club, refer to the breed as simply the Mastiff. The greatest weight ever recorded for a dog, 343 pounds (155.6 kg), was that of an English Mastiff. This ancient and faithful domestic, the pride of our island, uniting the useful, the brave and the docile, though sought by foreign nations and perpetuated on the continent, is nearly extinct where he probably was an aborigine, or is bastardized by numberless crosses, everyone of which degenerate from the invaluable character of the parent, who was deemed worthy to enter the Roman amphitheatre, and, in the presence of the masters of the worlds, encounter the pard, and assail even the lord of the savage tribes, whose courage was sublimed by torrid suns, and found none gallant enough to oppose him on the deserts of Zaara or the plains of Numidia.