THE LABRADOR RETRIEVER 193 



surprised she does not adopt the work of our creations as her 

 best. This is surely all wrong, for it was obviously the 

 selection of the best workers for hundreds of generations 

 that evolved the forms that we call setters, pointers, and 

 spaniels, and made them different from any other dogs, but did 

 not make them like show dogs of the present time. If the 

 latter had been the most fit form for the work to be done, 

 it would assuredly have been evolved by the selection of the 

 best workers. 



On these grounds, it seems to be unwise to place on a 

 pedestal for imitation and admiration the Labrador that was 

 beaten. 



If Darwinism has a spark of truth in it, selection of the 

 fittest for the acts of life has evolved every form in the world 

 except just the trivialities, the abnormalities, and distortions 

 that man has bred as a fancy, not to improve, but only to 

 alter. Fancy poultry has been one of the chief fields for 

 fancy operations in breeding, but, amongst all the new forms 

 and characters produced, there is only one that would survive 

 a state of nature for a couple of generations. That one is 

 the old English game fowl, which was evolved, not by fancy 

 selection, but by fighting that is, by the most severe and 

 discriminating form of selection and survival of the fittest. 



Just in the same way will the forms of gun-dogs take care 

 of themselves, provided selection of the fittest for work is 

 severe enough. The pointer and setter trials have neglected 

 stamina. If they had not done so, our working setters would 

 have had backs like iron bars, as theirs have in America, 

 where stamina has been the first consideration at field 

 trials. 



When Mr. Holland Hibbert ran Munden Single, the 

 Labrador, in the 1904 retriever trials, there is not much 

 doubt she would have been high up in the prize list had it 

 not been that the last runner she got was brought back dead. 

 It was a wing-tipped cock pheasant that Single roded out 

 and then chased. But the cock could almost beat the doe 



O 



by the help of its wings, and no doubt the Labrador was 

 13 



