SPORTING AND GUARD DOGS 



Arkwright * remarks that the first European reference to 

 dogs " which know of beasts and birds by the scent," dates 

 from about A.D. 1260, and opinion appears fairly unanimous 

 that they came from Spain ; " as one talks of a greyhound of 

 Britain, the boarhounds and bird-dogs come from Spain," 

 remarks an early writer quoted by the same authority. 

 Another writer remarks that Robert Dudley, Duke of North- 

 umberland, born in 1504, who " was a compleat Gent, in all 

 suitable employments," was " the first of all that taught a dog 

 to sit in order to catch partridges." * This, no doubt, was 

 the method practised with the spaniels f mentioned fairly 

 frequently in English records of the time of Henry VIII. 

 The sporting spaniels were originally large dogs and became 

 modified to pointers by selection and cross-breeding. " No 

 hound or greyhound, spaniel or other kind of dog to go in the 

 streets by day unless ' hardeled or ledde in leses or lyams or 

 otherwise, so it be no " noyance " under pain of forfeiture 

 to the taker and a fine of 4d. to the owner.' ' And again, 

 Robin the King's Majesty's spaniel keeper, was paid 565. gd. 

 " for hair cloth to rub the spaniels with and for meat and 

 lodging at Maidenhead and Windsor and at Putney, when 

 the King dined at my lord of Hartfordes." J 



The figure from Laufer's " Chinese Pottery of the Han 

 Dynasty," which is a composition from rubbings from a bas- 

 relief of the Han period, represents a form of sport practised 

 in China to this day. Whether or not the possession of 



* " The Pointer," W. Arkwright, pp. 6 and 10. 



f Spaniel. Murray gives the forms spaynel, spanyel, spayngyel (old French 

 espaignol, espaigneul, " Spanish dog "), spaignol. First mentioned 1388. Chaucer, 

 " Wife's Prologue," p. 267 : " For as a spaynel she wol on hym lepe," 1410. " Master 

 of Game " (M. S. Digby, p. 182) : " A goode spaynel shulde not be to rough, but 

 his tail shulde be rough." 1621. Burton, " Anat. Mel." : " Like a ranging Spaniel 

 that barkes at every bird he sees." Spaynel and spanyell were also used in the 

 fourteenth century = a Spaniard. 



J " Letters and Papers," 1542 and 1546. 



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