328 Modern Dogs. 



become general, as the more popular name has 

 obtained the voice of the public. 



According to the late Rev. T. Pearce( u Idstone"), 

 who must be taken as an authority on the variety, 

 about 1820 was the period when the then Duke of 

 Gordon took his special strain of setters in hand ; 

 but as to where they came from, or how they were 

 produced, no facts are forthcoming, and the result 

 is left to imagination. 



It is somewhat strange that two such observant 

 sportsmen as Mr. Charles St. John and Mr. John 

 Colquhoun, who, the former in " Highland Sports,'' 

 and the latter in " The Moor and the Loch," wrote 

 so charmingly of what appertains to dogs, shoot- 

 ing, natural history, and fishing in Scotland, should 

 have little or nothing to say about the Gordon setter. 

 They wrote some fifty years or so ago, and this 

 silence must be taken as an indication that the 

 Gordon setter was not a common dog then. 



One much regrets that at the present time (1892) 

 this old variety of setter is not to be found at Gordon 

 Castle. Years ago the dogs there were bred to 

 English setters, principally of Laverack blood, with 

 the result that the valued and true type of black, tan, 

 and white Gordon was entirely lost. The setters at 

 the kennels now, as I write, and for some years, have 

 been all useful working dogs of modern strains. 



