HISTORICAL NOTES 27 



This was shortly after the introduction of the 

 flintlock as a fowling piece. It was invented in 

 1630, but did not come in to stay until the latter 

 half of the sixteen hundreds, and this poem is one 

 of the earliest mentions of wing shooting. A 

 very good pointer is shown in a painting of date 

 1786, white with black saddle and ticks, of good 

 conformation and much like our modern animal, 

 showing how far he had progressed since 1711. 

 Like the setter, the pointer was a standard gun- 

 dog breed in the kennels of the great lords, and so 

 a number of notable strains were developed, such 

 as the Duke of Kingston's black pointers, Col. 

 Hamilton's double-nosed Spanish pointers, the 

 rough-coated Russian pointers owned by the Earl 

 of Powis, etc. A great number of Spanish and 

 Portuguese pointers were brought to England and 

 crossed on the native stock. The Spanish pointer 

 was heavy-bodied and small-headed in comparison 

 to his size, and his influence shows to-day in the 

 heavy buttocks of many of our pointer families. 

 Crossing foxhounds and setters on pointers to get 

 a faster dog was much practiced ; at that time the 

 owners seeming to care little for the very much 

 better plan of selective breeding from the type 

 itself — so little were the laws of heredity and 

 atavism known. 



