THE IRISH SETTER 165 



no other setters or spaniels of the colour can be traced in the 

 early history of what was then the English spaniel, or the setter. 



The same writer says that the English spaniels (setters) 

 were of two colours, " black-and-tan " and " red-and-white," so 

 that there is another possible origin of the whole-coloured red 

 dogs. Black-and-tan setters often produced a red dog, but not 

 the Irish dark rich red. This red puppy in the litter might 

 have arisen from an Irish cross, but, on the other hand, it might 

 have been a blend with the lemon-and-white coloured English 

 setters, or the result of puppies following the markings of one 

 ancestor and the colour of another. Those that the author bred 

 from black-and-tan parents had no dark hairs to suggest their 

 origin, but neither had they the rich chestnut of the Irish setter. 

 The writer's experience of breeding dogs inclines him to the 

 belief that the spaniel-like tendency of the breed, now that it 

 is selected for all-red colour, is proof not only of its spaniel but 

 probably of a springer origin. Their excitement, their merry 

 low-carried sterns, and their noses on the ground, speak like an 

 open book to one who has bred and watched the breeding of all 

 races of setters for forty years, and has assured himself that 

 selection for colour is the automatic selection of character usually 

 found with that colour. 



The late Mr. Laverack was of opinion that crossing his 

 black-and-whites with the lemon-and-whites of the same litter 

 was in fact equivalent to cross breeding. However, he lived to 

 introduce red dogs in his breed, so that the former kind of 

 crossing does not do everything. There is no doubt that size 

 and fertility suffer by this method, but however often the in- 

 cestuous breeding is repeated such a thing as a blend of the 

 two colours was almost unknown that is to say, when a liver- 

 and-white one did, very rarely, make its appearance, Mr. 

 Laverack himself traced it to a former cross with the Edmund 

 Castle breed of liver-and-white setters. There was always a 

 difference other than colour between the lemon-and-white and 

 the black-and-white brothers and sisters a difference which 

 suggested two distinct sources of origin of not at all related 

 breeds. Consequently, if the red-and-white has not been entirely 



