234 Modern Dogs. 



One of our modern writers falls into a curious error 

 with regard to a picture by Francis Desportes. The 

 artist depicts two dogs, which the author says are 

 examples of the " early foxhound and pointer cross 

 in France," of the date about 1701. As a fact, the 

 picture is a portrait of two favourite hounds from the 

 pack of Louis XV., Pompee and Floressant, and was- 

 painted in 1 739. There is no mistaking the hound 

 character of these dogs, and they display no trace, 

 so far as I can make out, of any pointer appearance 

 whatever. The pheasant and two other birds in the 

 background are merely accessories to the picture, 

 and are not put there to indicate that the dogs 

 below them are of a game finding variety. However r 

 there is extant another drawing by the same artist, 

 of a pointer and two setters, with partridges in front 

 of them, the smooth-coated dog being quite of 

 modern type, but with his stern shortened. 



By the means of that fine old picture, " The 

 Spanish Pointer," by Stubbs, and which was engraved 

 by Woollett in 1 768, we know what kind of a dog 

 it was : liver and white in colour, heavily and 

 massively made, big of head, double nosed, strong 

 loined, shortened stern ; a cumbrous dog, steady 

 enough, no doubt, but as unlike our modern pointer 

 as a Suffolk punch is unlike a thoroughbred race- 

 horse. To one of the London dog shows, I think it 



