English Setters 137 



small number of winning daughters, — the 

 actual number of winning daughters not being 

 recorded and the original data being lost. 



Going back to the dogs bred between 1825 

 and 1870, it will be remembered that Lave- 

 rack uniformly bred brother and sister to- 

 gether when the}" were old, except on one 

 occasion which involved breeding a dog 

 back to his granddam. To get that combina- 

 tion, Laverack departed from his usual prac- 

 tice and used two generations of young sires 

 which had no corresponding young dams, 

 and the final animals which he had came 

 from that combination. The result was in- 

 evitable. In 1870 Laverack's bitches were 

 much superior to his dogs, and the best Eng- 

 lish setters for field work came from crossing 

 Llewellin's dogs on Laverack's bitches, and 

 not from the reciprocal cross. The marked 

 difference between these two crosses at- 

 tracted much attention among dog breeders, 

 but the explanation has not before been 

 given. The cross between Laverack's dogs 

 and Llewellin's bitches, however, produced 



