348 Modern Dogs. 



cannot say that the red setter may not, in these favoured districts,, 

 have existed in considerable numbers. 



Now it has often been mooted, and always met with a most 

 decided opposition from the Irish Red Setter Club, that a class 

 should be given for red and white dogs, and surely if they are 

 more easily broken than the whole coloured dogs and more 

 easily seen on mountain or moor, it would not be a step in 

 the wrong direction to try and resuscitate so valuable a strain. 

 There must be many specimens still existing when so com- 

 paratively recently as the Rotunda show, before referred to, 

 several red and whites were exhibited on the benches. There 

 is another point worth observing, and that is the red dogs 

 of the past, and even those shown at the earlier shows were not 

 nearly so deep in colour as many now before the public on the 

 benches. The Irish Red Setter Club's own rules state that the 

 correct colour is " a rich golden chesnut." How many of this 

 colour do we now see winning at our leading dog shows. 



My next informant (says Mr. Bennett) was Mr. Cecil Moore, the 

 breeder of champion Palmerston, Kate (afterwards Mr. Perrin's), 

 and numerous other celebrities. This gentleman is from county 

 Tyrone, and informs me that in that locality the red dog was 

 the favourite, and numbers of them were to be found in the 

 possession of sportsmen about the town of Omagh, and as he has 

 turned " the three score and ten years allotted to man," and is a 

 good shot, and kept dogs of the right sort, his opinion is 

 valuable. 



That the red and white were in existence he freely admits, but 

 that they were Irish setters at all he denies, as he holds to the 

 opinion that they were imported from England, and were a 

 distinct breed. Amongst breeders of the pure red sort he 

 mentions Mr. Jason Hazzard, of Timaskea, county Fermanagh,, 

 who, so far back as the year 1812, kept nothing but whole coloured 

 specimens. The Earl of Enniskillen, grandfather of the present 

 Earl, about the same period had a different strain of the red 

 colour, on which he set great value. Between these gentlemen 



