158 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



reason, caused New York fashion to winter in the pine districts 

 of Georgia, of which Thomasville is a good specimen, for 

 sport and health. 



Since writing the above, a puppy the author selected in 

 America in 1904, then eight months old and unentered, has 

 beaten all the pointers and setters at the grouse trials on 

 Lord Home's beautiful Lanarkshire moors, in August 1906. 

 This is Captain H. Heywood Lonsdale's Ightfield Rob Roy, 

 and very fully confirms a view expressed above, that the 

 severest tests are the best for keeping up a breed. This dog 

 comes of the remarkably in-bred race referred to in the chapter 

 on English setters, and it need not be mentioned further, 

 except to say that the pure breed as first-rate performers 

 came to an end in this country owing to in-breeding, without 

 at the same time selecting as severely for vitality as the field 

 trial system does in America. Selection has negatived the 

 well-known influence of in-breeding in everything except 

 in size. This pure bred in-bred race was originated over there 

 by the author's selection for Americans of dogs all descended 

 from those six setters named in the chapter on English setters, 

 and picked and recommended from the kennels of the late 

 Mr. Tom Statter, the late Mr. Laverack, the late Mr. Barclay 

 Field, Mr. Purcell Llewellin, and others. In the exported 

 originals they were Laverack and Rhcebe crosses, like 

 Mr. Barclay Field's Rock on the one hand ; Laveracks, like 

 Mr. Laverack's Victress (Dash and Moll) ; Laverack and 

 Rhcebe crosses like the late Mr. Statter's Rob Roy ; Duke 

 and Rhcebe crosses bred by Mr. Statter, of which strain two 

 big bitches were sent out ; and others of the three crosses, 

 Duke, Rhcebe, and Laveracks, like Mr. Llewellin's Druid and 

 his Count Noble. The demand for them arose in consequence 

 of some letters the author had written in the American sporting 

 press referring to the superiority of these three strains over any 

 others of that period. The author even ventured to give them 

 a title, namely " the Field Trial breed," and that was the sole 

 reason why they were kept uncrossed with other blood in 

 America. It is this uncrossed blood that is represented in 



