308 THE AMEKICAN BOOK OF THE DOG. 



almost entirely in the hands of noblemen and country gen- 

 tlemen, who kept them on their estates for shooting pur- 

 poses. These were chary of disposing of surplus stock to 

 any but their immediate friends, who in turn maintained 

 them for their private uses. Did an outsider, therefore, 

 desire to obtain a specimen, he could procure it clandes- 

 tinely from the game-keeper only, who would report a 

 puppy as having been destroyed, whereas he had sold it and 

 pocketed the proceeds of his dishonesty. It is therefore 

 not difficult of comprehension that under conditions such 

 as these but few were disseminated among the general 

 public. 



But all this is changed now, and pure-bred Clumbers are 

 easily to be got in England, though high-class animals are 

 few and far between in that country, as elsewhere. 



That they were prized by the highest class of sportsmen 

 is borne witness to by Colonel Hamilton in his " Recollec- 

 tions,"' which are of shooting incidents in the early days of 

 the century. He writes: " A Spaniel known as the Clum- 

 ber breed His Grace always shooting over them in his 

 woods is much sought after by sportsmen." Then he 

 enumerates their many excellences. 



This extract from "The Dog," the work of the late 

 lamented "Idstone," will be of interest: 



The best pictures of the dog extant, perhaps, are those of Clumbers, for 

 from Bewick to Abraham Cooper we had few, if any, painters, except Mor- 

 land, who could make anything better than a map of the dog; and norland's 

 dogs are generally Clumbers, an-1 first-rate specimens. 



I have no doubt that some good English Spaniels existed in his day, for I 

 have seen a good picture by this artist of snipe-shooting in the snow, where 

 English or colored Spaniels are employed; but evidently the Clumber was the 

 dog of his time, as it will be of all time. 



Somewhere about 1868-69, a fine picture by F. Wheatley, A. R. A., of the 

 Duke of Newcastle, was exhibited in the Portrait Gallery in London, and was at- 

 tributed by several persons to Morland, who seldom, if ever, finished so highly 

 as the former painter. The Duke is represented on his bay shooting-pony, sur- 

 rounded by a group of Clumbers, which a writer in the Sporting Magazine of 

 1807, when an engraving of the picture, or a part of it only, appeared in that 

 serial, calls Springers, or Cock-flushers. William Mansell at that time had had 

 the care of them for thirty years, and made it his study to produce this race 

 of dogs unmixed, and they were at this time known as the Duke or Mansell' s 



