I2O TRAINING THE HUNTING DOG 



mer attitude was preferred, an additional reason for 

 its adoption being, probably, that it was more easily 

 taught to a dog like the spaniel, which has not the 

 natural cataleptic attitude of the pointer. But when 

 'shooting flying' came in vogue, breakers made ine 

 attempt to assimilate the attitude of the setting span- 

 iel or 'setter/ as he was now called to that of the 

 pointer ; and in process of time, and possibly also by 

 crossing with that dog, they succeeded, though even 

 after the lapse of more than a century the cataleptic 

 condition is not as fully displayed by the setter as by 

 the pointer." 



It would be difficult to crowd into the same amount 

 of space more trashy nonsense than is contained in 

 the foregoing quotation, and yet it has served writ- 

 ers for generations as good warrant for asserting as 

 fact what it merely presents as probabilities. 



Modern writers do not hesitate to assert that the 

 setter is derived from the spaniel, though Stonehenge 

 qualifies it by stating : "Or both are offshoots from 

 the same parent stock." In plain words, he did not 

 know what they were derived from. Again, it is 

 much easier to evolve the dropping attitude from the 

 point than it was to evolve from the point the drop- 



