290 • The Dog Book 



show of 1876, entered as Russian setters, and have always had the idea 

 that they were closely related to the rough griffon. They also might have 

 been descended from some rough-coated tracking hounds which developed 

 pointing instincts and were then made use of with the gun. 



Lee quotes from Sydenham Edwards, 1805, that the pointer was first 

 introduced in England from Portugal by a merchant who traded with that 

 country, and was first used by a man named Bechill, a resident of Norfolk, 

 "who could shoot flying." It was also said that Bechill was a "reduced 

 baron," and that the importation of this Portuguese pointer was made 

 at a very modern period. Presuming that to be all true, there were many 

 pointers in England before that one arrived from Portugal. We have 

 already proved that shooting flying was well known in England in 171 1 

 and if not known on the Continent at an equally early date, it was so at 

 least sixty years before Edwards wrote, and over pointers. We show 

 proof of that in a copy of a painting, by the German artist Ridinger, of a 

 French gentleman with his pointers. As this engraving has both a French 

 and a German title, we presume it was published in France, and although 

 the German title of Reise J'ager has but the one meaning of the travelling 

 or moving sportsman, the French title, *^ Le Chasseur au vol,' can 

 be rendered as the flying sportsman or the on-the-wing sportsman; what we 

 would call "the wingshot." The painting certainly does not admit of the 

 interpretation of a travelling sportsman, but of one resting after shooting or 

 just returned from shooting. 



The pointers are well drawn, and all much similar in type, showing 

 altogether different character and makeup from the Spanish type, and at 

 about the same time as Ridinger we know that Desportes was painting 

 French pointers which bore no resemblance to the Spanish dog, showing 

 that that heavily-built animal had nothing to do with the production of the 

 pointing dog of France and Germany. 



We can readily understand how the heavy Spanish dog became plentiful 

 in England. Communication and commerce were by water in preference 

 to expensive and tedious land travel, and English trade with Spain was 

 very extensive, so that more dogs came from Spain to England than from 

 the interior of the Continent, and with far less trouble. Another suggestion 

 is that the dogs of France and England were nearer alike, and the appearance 

 of a French dog would not be at all noticeable compared with that of the 

 heavy, strongly-built dog from Spain. 



