The Flat or Wavy Coated Black Retriever. 381 



the writer goes, their one fault lies in their indis- 

 position to face thick covert, and in whins and 

 gorse I have seen them actually useless. Still there 

 are some strains that I believe will do as well in 

 the roughest covert as the curly dog. A friend 

 of mine was taking exception to the lack of perse- 

 verance a flat-coated retriever displayed in making 

 out the line of a winged pheasant that had run about 

 some bramble bushes ; at the same time praising 

 his own dog, with a curly coat on him as shaggy as 

 that of a Herdwick sheep. There requires to be a 

 happy mean between the two, for, where one would 

 not face the brambles at all, the other would, and 

 have to be cut out of them, the strong prickles 

 holding him as fast as if he were in a net. After 

 every day's shooting it would take two or three 

 hours to free my friend's dog from the " burrs " that 

 had become entangled in his coat. A hard, wavy 

 coated retriever, clad in a jacket not unlike those 

 possessed by the German griffons, would be useful 

 in a rough country. 



The first introduction of the flat-coated retriever 

 to the show bench was at Cremorne in 1873, but 

 in the first volume of the Kennel Club Stud Book, 

 printed in 1874, the two varieties are classed 

 together. He was a much bigger and coarser dog 

 than he is now. Some of the early specimens were 



