146 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



black-and-tans and the Irish. But such crosses are not required 

 as long as America has a strain of straight-bred ones uncrossed 

 with anything on this side the water for a quarter of a century. 

 Indeed, the value of the American cross has already been 

 proved by Mr. Alexander Hall's Guiniard Shot and Dash. 

 They are bred from a bitch imported from America, but not 

 a " straight-bred " one. These two and Captain Lonsdale's 

 Ightfield Duffer were the best setters seen in 1905, and in their 

 absence another Ightfield bred one on one side of her pedigree, 

 namely, Mr. Herbert Mitchell's Lingfield Beryl, has carried all 

 the spring field trials of the 1906 season by storm, and has 

 beaten the pointers equally with the setters in single and 

 in brace stakes too. She is a long way the best setter Mr. 

 Herbert Mitchell has ever had. Like Ightfield Gaby, already 

 mentioned as the best of his period, the only fault with her 

 is that, with the same beauty of form and strength to carry 

 her light setter-like body, she would have been better if larger. 



Of course this is intended to be hypercritical, but it is 

 necessary to point out that Gaby is 22 inches at the shoulder, 

 and Count Wind'em, his best ancestor, was nearer 25 than 

 24 inches. This is too much to lose in twenty years, for it 

 really means losing nearly half the size of the dog. 



It is pleasing to note that the American cross with the old 

 blood, even with small dogs on both sides, seems to recover the 

 lost size. This is a great point ; because, although a good little 

 one is enormously better than a lumbering big one, yet a good 

 big one is out of all proportion better than the same form on a 

 small scale. 



A few years ago, Mr. B. J. Warwick was winning all before 

 him in the field with setters of very small size. The blood of 

 most of them was a blend of all the sorts named above except 

 the American strain. That is, they were descended from Ranger 

 on one side and from the late Mr. Heywood Lonsdale's sort on 

 the other. They were beautifully broken, had for the most part 

 capital noses and plenty of sense, but few of them are likely to 

 breed dogs better than themselves, because they mostly lacked 

 external form and size. Many of them were bred by Mr. 



