CHAPTER XXL 

 THE ENGLISH WATER SPANIEL. 



PERSONALLY I should not have taken any further 

 notice of this variety than has already been done, 

 believing it to be almost, if not entirely, extinct, its 

 place now being occupied by the ordinary retriever ; 

 but the Spaniel Club still acknowledges it, so some 

 introduction to their description is required. 



The old-fashioned water dog our great grand- 

 fathers used was the English water spaniel. Mostly 

 liver and white in colour, with a curly coat, it was 

 just such an animal as would be produced through 

 a cross between the modern brown curly-coated 

 retriever and an ordinary liver and white spaniel 

 Reinagle, in the " Sportsman's Cabinet," gives us 

 such a dog, and later, so recently as 1845, Youatt 

 describes and illustrates the " Water Spaniel." That 

 writer gives it a good character for docility, &c., and 

 Ewan Smith draws him not unlike a modern curly 

 retriever, but evidently liver and white. Certainly 

 his illustration makes this spaniel a bigger dog than 



