IO2 WILDFOWL SHOOTING IN THE WESTERN STATES. 



curly. This was the dam. The sire was an otter 

 hound, bought on Tyneside, a thorough good repre- 

 sentative of the old type, hard haired, and showing 

 a tendency to be knock-kneed ; coat very hard and 

 straight. I had intended breeding the bitch to a 

 Newfoundland of good parts, but an accident occurred, 

 similar to that which procured us the valuable strain 

 in our thoroughbreds, viz., the Godolphin blood. 



Boatswain, for so I called him, would have been 

 drowned, as all his brothers and sisters were, had 

 not a friend's little boy taken an inordinate fancy to 

 him. He took to retrieving naturally before he 

 was three months old, and would swim across the 

 Rock River in a flood, a month afterwards, yet for 

 all this he was the ugliest, biggest-jointed, and 

 slackest put together puppy that I ever saw. At 

 maturity his coat was the counterpart of his sire's, 

 in other respects he followed his dam. I ever had a 

 horror of mongrels about me, and possess the antipathy 

 now, but Boatswain is a privileged being, and is as 

 popular with my guests as with his master. I had 

 serious thoughts once of bringing him to England, 

 just to show how smart an American-bred dog 

 could be, but I think my neighbours would have gone 

 demented if deprived of his society. 



As I have above said, I am far from partial to curs, 

 yet for a person who requires a retriever for trans- 

 atlantic water-fowl shooting, I think if he could get 

 the progenitors, he might do worse than make the 

 experiment that turned out for me such a " ten 

 stroke." I am at present debarred from repeating 

 it, for I have lost both parents. However, I have 

 reason to hope that through the instrumentality of 

 friends the breed can be replaced. 



But after all, retrievers if you except the Irish 

 water, and some other spaniels which by successive 

 crossing are but mongrels, sprang from mingling 

 different breeds, until the desired result is obtained, 



