[ Swainson / On the Natural History and Classification of Quadrupeds ]
Swainson (1789 - 1855) was an English naturalist and illustrator. He devoted much of his professional life to research in to systems of biological classification, and has several bird species named after him.
This book's only edition was published in 1835 (London: Longman).
There is only one brief reference to Newfoundlands, which occurs in a discussion of dog typology.
The long snout which characterises all the gliriform and grallatorial types is seen in the greyhound: the water dogs remind us of the natatorial structure: the thick tails of the spaniels, and the large size of the Newfoundland dogs, exhibit the rasorial type; while the others either arrange themselves under a ferocious or a highly intelligent group.
"Gliriform" means having incisor teeth like those in rodents; "grallatorial" means 'pertaining to wading birds,' and is presumably a reference to the long legs typical of sighthounds. "Rasorial" refers to the ground-scratching behavior typical of chickens. Why Swainson thinks this applies to Newfoundlands is beyond me, but it may help explain why much of his work on animal classification was widely derided by his contemporaries. Perhaps he should have stuck to paintings of birds....