PREFACE xiii 



preserving, where, if they still disagree, they will find a partridge 

 success described that will amply repay their good nature, 

 unless they know a plan by which season's partridge bags can 

 be doubled, doubled again, and then again, in three con- 

 secutive years. 



On the subject of dogs, I may say that thirty to thirty-five 

 years ago I recommended to some American sportsmen three 

 different sorts of setters. Either two of them had bred well 

 together in England. These have been crossed together ever 

 since in America, and no other cross has been admitted to 

 the Stud Book devoted to them. They have been a revela- 

 tion in the science of breeding domestic animals, for, in spite 

 of all the in-breeding represented there, I was enabled to select 

 a puppy in 1904 that in Captain Hey wood Lonsdale's hands 

 has beaten all the English pointers and setters at field trials 

 in 1906. I have more particularly referred to this in a chapter 

 on English setters, and in another on strenuous dogs and sport 

 in America. 



I have already tendered my thanks, but I should like 

 publicly to repeat my indebtedness, to those who have lent 

 me the best working dogs in England for models, or have sent 

 me photographs of them and other pictures. These include 

 Mr. Eric Parker, Editor of The County Gentleman, Mr. W. 

 Arkwright, the Hon. Holland Hibbert, Mr. Herbert Mitchell, 

 Mr. C. C. Eversfield, Mr. A. T. Williams, Captain H. Heywood 

 Lonsdale, Mr. B. J. Warwick, the Editor of Bailey, Mr. Allan 

 Brown, and the President of the world's oldest established, 

 and National, Field Trial Society, namely Col. C. J. Cotes, 

 of Pitchford Hall, who has sent me some photographs of 

 his, and his late father's, Woodcote pointers and retrievers, 

 including an original importation of 1832, and founder of his 

 present breed of the latter race, and in doing this he has been 

 kind enough to say : 



" I have always considered you to know more about the 

 breaking and breeding of setters than any man living, and 

 that it was entirely through you that the apex of setter breed- 

 ing was reached about twenty-five years ago, and through your 



