BREAKING AND HANDLING. 33 



therefore the setter will then be a hound, the product of a 

 cross between a pointer hound and spaniel hound, and the 

 speculation would be as reasonable as any which are 

 advanced, at present, as to the origin. 



If the setter had a spaniel origin, there would be some 

 evidences of it in the well known tendency of all animals to 

 revert, at times, to ancestral types ; yet in all cases of rever- 

 sion in pure blooded setters, it is to the pure setter form. 

 It may be said that the breed has been kept pure so long 

 that the characteristics have become permanently fixed ; 

 that the origin is so far in the past that the tendency to 

 reversion is lost ; however, such is taking too much for 

 granted as a negative argument ; if it is that far in the past, 

 we can know nothing of the origin. A breed is not so easily 

 and distinctly established. Some intermediate gradation 

 of forms would be preserved, showing a regular series, 

 either continuous or broken, from the parent stock to the 

 setter. It is hardly reasonable to assume the total destruc- 

 tion of all the intermediate groups and gradations, leaving 

 the two breeds distinct without any sub-breeds showing 

 unmistakable relationship to both. 



It is well known that by selection of the best specimens 

 in breeding, the forms of animals can be improved and 

 changed more and more from generation to generation in 

 accordance with the purposes of the breeder, as seen in the 

 forms of horses for speed and draft, and in the forms of 

 other domestic breeds ; yet this susceptibility to change 

 under certain conditions is confined chiefly to the physical 

 forms, the effects of change being imperceptible in the 

 habits and instincts of improved and unimproved horses, or 

 other domestic animals. To maintain an improved breed 

 up to the required standard of excellence, continued selec- 

 tion of the superior animals is necessary to breed from, else 

 they by promiscuous breeding revert to the common forms. 



