60 TRAINING THE HUNTING DOG 



by selection or by crossing the Talbot hound and 

 spaniel." 



From the implication in the foregoing for the 

 origin of the setter as well as the act of pointing is 

 therein only matter of implication it was but a 

 short step for later and more superficial writers 

 to assert that the setter had a spaniel origin, and that 

 the act of pointing had its source in the training of a 

 few dogs to lie down while a net was spread over 

 them and the covey which they had found. Could 

 anything be more inconsequential in the explanation 

 of a simple subject than that in 1555 an unknown 

 Duke trained a Sussex spaniel "to set birds for the 

 net and soon afterward the setter was produced, 

 either by selection or by crossing the Talbot hound 

 and the spaniel" ? As to the origin of the setter, there 

 is but one sensible conclusion that is to say, we do 

 not know what it is. Up to the time of Col. Hutchin- 

 son there were few authors on canine subjects who 

 wrote from their own practical experience, and fewer 

 still who had proper discriminating powers of mind 

 to comprehend the dog as he is, and to write of him 

 accordingly. They accepted all the absurdities, con- 

 jectures and vagaries of the first writers as being 



