164 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



draw on he would again dash forward, and again locate his game 

 with equally sudden points. But the majority of good English 

 setters at that time could out-stay him, and particularly the 

 Laverack setters Countess and Nellie, with which he often 

 worked, could have killed him. Mr. O'Callaghan's setters were 

 rarely good enough to go to field trials, and although two of 

 them won there, they were very lucky to do so. Perhaps these 

 dogs deteriorated less than any other breed that were bred for 

 show, or perhaps it would be safer to say they declined in work 

 slower than others, but there is no doubt that they were on the 

 down grade, not only in work but in true setter appearance. 

 That they were as pretty as any dogs could be at one time is 

 freely admitted, but they had lost three-parts of the scope of 

 Palmerston and Kate, and their character of work was spaniel- 

 like rather than setter-like in fact, just what their looks led one 

 to expect they would prove to be. 



Unfortunately, the author has never seen the Irish field 

 trials : the reason is that the English pointers have usually 

 proved better than the Irish setters, so that there seemed to be 

 nothing novel to see by going. But it is very difficult to believe 

 that the show Irish setters that usually represent the breed at 

 English trials are the best workers of the race. The character 

 of the breed when the author first saw it at work in the sixties 

 was distinctly setter-like, and not spaniel-like. 



There has been a great deal of controversy upon how the 

 dark-red colour arose. Mr. John King, who knew more of Irish 

 setters than any other man known to the author, affirmed that 

 red-and-white was the original colour, and the general opinion 

 was that those of the last-named markings were the most easy 

 to break. All the most setter-like Irish that have come before 

 the author have had more or less white upon them, and as 

 colour certainly denotes blood or origin, and the manner of 

 hunting of the whole-red dogs is spaniel-like, it does not seem 

 to be unlikely that the springer spaniel, the colour of a blood 

 bay horse without a white hair spoken of by a Suffolk parson 

 in the middle of the eighteenth century, may have had a good 

 deal to do with the origin of the red Irish setter. At any rate, 



