258 BRITISH DOGS 



were far superior in appearance to most of the Setters of the present 

 day, and were no doubt blends of these old strains. The writer 

 saw some of them on partridges : they had good noses and style, 

 but were not well broken. 



Again, there seems to have been a distinct strain of Setter in 

 Wales, though personally the writer has only seen two specimens, 

 and they were short, cobby things like Spaniels, with long, curly 

 ears and wavy coats. 



And now we come to a very important epoch in dog history, 

 the period of shows and then of field trials. The first Birmingham 

 show was held in November, 1859. The entries were very few 

 and the animals very imperfect. For the first few years the prize 

 honours were chiefly gained by the Black-and-tans, or so-called 

 Gordon Setters, and then there suddenly appeared on the scene 

 a man called Laverack with some specimens of a kennel that 

 he guaranteed had been bred from two ancestors for forty years, 

 and these carried all before them. 



Mr. Laverack and his Setters have had such a startling effect on 

 the Setter world that they are worthy of some considerable comment. 

 The history of Laverack himself is sufficiently interesting. 



A native of some Westmorland village, he appears in his youth 

 to have been a shoemaker's apprentice. Early in life, however, 

 he came into possession of a legacy bequeathed to him by some 

 distant relative. On this he appears to have been able to gratify 

 the exceeding love for sport which was doubtless in his blood from 

 some remote ancestor. In those days, which would be about 1825, 

 there was any amount of grouse-shooting to be got for nothing by 

 any one who was not afraid of roughing it, and Laverack appears to 

 have led a nomadic life devoted to Setters and shooting for at least 

 forty years. He was a good sportsman, and undoubtedly a most 

 marvellous judge of dogs, and for that reason a most successful 

 breeder of beauty and of some excellence. 



It always seemed a great pity that he " gave himself away " to 

 the public by publishing his miraculous in-and-in pedigrees, which 

 can be seen in the Kennel Club Stud Book. He probably believed 

 them to some extent himself, but whether he ever succeeded in 

 inducing others to do so, with the exception perhaps of a very 

 few, is far more dubious. To any man of common sense, not 

 to speak of any practical experience, they are simply an impos- 

 sibility. One thing is, however, certain, that his talent for selection 

 enabled him to breed very closely, and so to preserve and increase 

 the beauty of his type, and that his inherent canniness, as well 

 as his perfect judgment, enabled him to select occasional fresh 

 strains of blood, which improved instead of destroying the excellence 

 of the progeny. 



Sometimes also he, in the soothing atmosphere of a winter 



