The Black and Tan (or Gordon) Setter. 329 



In England no doubt there had been setters of a 

 black and brown colour from the earliest manufacture 

 or introduction of the breed, and Gervaise Markham, 

 in " Hunger's Prevention ; or, the whole Art of 

 Fowling by Land and Water" (1655), mentions 

 black and fallow dogs as the hardest to endure 

 labour. This description must be taken to mean 

 black and tan, but not to imply that such dogs were 

 similar to the Gordon setter of to-day. Again, a 

 writer in 1776, who calls himself " A Gentleman of 

 Suffolk, a staunch sportsman," says there were fifty 

 years before he wrote two distinct tribes (strains) of 

 setting dogs " the black tanned, and the orange or 

 lemon and white." But from other sources we 

 find the latter colour the commonest. Sydenham 

 Edwards (1805), in " Cynographia Britannica," gives 

 an illustration of three setters, one of which is 

 undoubtedly black and tan in colour, but in type it 

 has very little if any resemblance to the modern 

 strain. Tw r o white and orange setters are given in 

 Bingley's Natural History (1809), and no mention is 

 made of black and tan setters. 



Our old friend " The Druid" (Mr. H. H. Dixon, 

 of Carlisle), who visited Gordon Castle about thirty 

 years ago, says : "We beguiled the way by a chat with 

 Jubb, the head keeper, whose seven and thirty black, 

 white, and tans, were spreading themselves out like 



