RETRIEVERS AND THEIR BREAKING 185 



show pedigree, as his sire was a Champion ; but it was noticed 

 that Major was a very distinct reversion to the old wavy- 

 coated sort, for he was quite as much a curly as a flat coated 

 one. He had been purchased out of one of Mr. George 

 Davies' annual retriever sales at Aldridge's, and his work was 

 good although perhaps not brilliant. This was not all that 

 the show men could desire, and the following year another 

 sandy liver-coloured dog, named Mr. A. T. Williams' Don o 

 Gerwn, easily won first. This dog was a son of that Rust 

 spoken of before, and his sire was a cream-coloured dog of 

 Lord Tweedmouth's strain even more of a facer for the 

 believers in exhibition dogs. But on this occasion another 

 son of Wimpole Peter was third, and in 1905 turned the tables 

 on Don of Gerwn. This was a handsome but somewhat slow 

 dog belonging to Colonel Cotes of Pitchford. Don put himself 

 out of court by not condescending to notice dead game, and 

 hunting on the principle of "nothing but runners attended to." 

 The Pitchford dog is descended from a very old working 

 strain, which first figured in public when one of them appeared 

 in the pages of the Sporting Magazine about the year Queen 

 Victoria came to the throne. But, as a son of Wimpole Peter 

 won the stake, and three sons of Horton Rector were high up 

 in it, the exhibition division has every right to be pleased 

 with its first unalloyed triumph. Mr. Allan Shuter, as the 

 owner of the living Rector, has even more reason to be pleased 

 than Mr. Radcliffe Cooke, as sometime owner of the now 

 dead Peter. But Mr. Shuter's own entry was not at all what 

 was wanted, for he was too big, too lumbering in body, and 

 not particularly nimble in mind. Mr. Remnant has come near 

 winning first on various occasions, and may be looked upon 

 as a sportsman likely to improve the breed, by the neglect of 

 beauty spots and selection for the fittest, as also very decidedly 

 may be Mr. C. C. Eley, Major Eley his brother, and their 

 cousin, Captain Eley, and Mr. G. R. Davies. Captain Harding, 

 too, in Salop, has the right sort, and his Almington Merlin has 

 had bad luck, or another Wimpole Peter would have come to 

 the front. 



