304 The Dog Book 



they are too numerous to mention, but we may name Lilac, Bang II., 

 Tiding, Bona Belle and Maggie, and quite a tribe of beautiful bitches, such 

 as Shotover, Quickshot, Belle of Bow, Meally, etc. In fact, they are too 

 many to name. He kept getting good stock up to the end, as he was eleven 

 years old when he got Bang Bang, while several others in the possession 

 of Mr. Price are much younger than that. 



"His extraordinary merit also descends to further generations, as shown 

 in Priam, Romp, Graphic, Lake, Tramp II. and others, while some of 

 the best pointers out have been bred from his daughters and granddaughters. 

 It is a strain so bred into that we are never likely to lose it, and fifty years 

 hence there will doubtless be numerous records to remind breeders of a day 

 when there lived a pillar of the stud book known as Champion Bang." 



True as that was when written at the time of his death, it has still 

 more force to-day, for his blood was then only known as a first cross or 

 perhaps once interbred, while at this distance of time we have it interwoven 

 all through the pedigrees of our cracks, showing it to be the great surviving . 

 blood. In his time, too, there were the Pilkington dogs, the kennel from 

 which Tory, Garnet, Jessie and Faust came, and later on Meteor, but they 

 are no longer prominent compared with the Bangs. The most concentrated 

 instance of Pilkington breeding that was in this country was probably 

 Spinaway, who was by Garnet, out of the St. Louis Kennel Club's Keswick. 

 Spinaway was the dam of Robert le Diable, by Croxteth, and it must not be 

 forgotten that the latter was by Young Bang, who ran any of the sons of 

 the old dog a good race for first honours as the best of Bang's sons. Perhaps 

 Young Bang was assisted in attaining his excellence by a piece of rather 

 unusual inbreeding, and that is to the sire of Hamlet. Coham's Bang 

 was as we know the sire of Champion Bang. Coham's Bang was by Hamlet 

 out of Venus, each of which was by Bird's Bob, whose dam came from 

 the kennel of Joseph Lang, the gunmaker, always a famous one for good 

 dogs. The dam of Young Bang was Davey's Luna, who was by a son of 

 this same Bob, and Luna's dam was also by a son of Bob. 



The first of the Bang family to come to this country, at least the first 

 of any prominence, was Bow, which Mr. T. H. Scott brought over in 1878, 

 when the dog was four years old. When Bow arrived in the West he 

 was in very bad condition. We remember the late Charley Lincoln empha- 

 sising the excellence of codliver oil as a skin application by giving an account 

 of the fearful condition that Bow was in and the marvellously short time 



