THE ENGLISH SETTER 255 



in the last hundred years is an exceedingly doubtful matter. The 

 writer inclines to a medium opinion viz. that a hundred years 

 ago there were a great many more really handsome dogs than 

 there are now, and also a great many more really useful and de- 

 pendable for shooting purposes, but that there are a select few to 

 be found at the present day vastly superior certainly in beauty, 

 possibly in working qualities, to their ancestors. His own recollection 

 of the ancient Setter, which goes back to the year 1853, is that 

 he distinctly remembers at that time three, if not four, distinctly 

 different-looking dogs. 



There were a great number of Setters in those days, mostly 

 lemon-and-whites, in the South and West of England great 

 upstanding dogs with fine shoulders and hindquarters and exuberant 

 feather. These may be taken as the pure breed. Again, there was 

 another sort shorter in the leg, with heads broader and more 

 massive, and coats inclined to be curly ; these had no doubt been 

 crossed with the Irish Water Spaniel. There was a third sort, of 

 which the writer has seen but very few specimens, a short, stout dog 

 with a short, broad nose, and as slow as a man ; this may be taken 

 as a recent cross with the Spaniel. 



The fourth sort was a small, fine-limbed, beautifully feathered, 

 straight-coated dog, with a finely cut head, generally black-and- 

 white. Mr. Hiles, the agent for Lady Bowden, in Herefordshire, had 

 a strain of these. The writer bought one himself from him early 

 in the fifties, and he was one of the best in the field he ever saw 

 and as handsome as a picture. 



Now, it is a common idea that there are a great many more 

 Setters, and Pointers too, in these days than there were fifty years 

 ago. The writer does not believe a word of it. 



There are, we know, in the present day very large kennels of both 

 breeds, chiefly kept for show and field-trial purposes ; but these 

 are, after all, few and far between, while now, alas ! even on the 

 Scotch moors dogs are rarely used, and for partridge shooting we 

 may almost say never. In the old days every man who shot had 

 one or two dogs no one ever shot without them and some had 

 fairly large kennels. Not only that fast-declining race the old 

 English gentleman had his Setters or Pointers or both, but every 

 sporting farmer likewise. 



The writer has a vivid remembrance of a Setter belonging to 

 a man of this then most worthy class, and with whom as a boy 

 he had many a good day's sport. The dog was a huge black-and- 

 white, nearly as big as a Newfoundland, with a massive Pointer 

 head and a curly coat. He was very slow but exceedingly sure, 

 and if you gave him plenty of time, he would range every inch 

 of a field and find everything in it. His master was a fine fellow 

 of 6ft. 3in., big in proportion, and immensely powerful, he was 



