THE DOG. 41 



ing from those already educated, than by educating others ab initio. 

 Thus, in time, a breed could be formed in which the acquired 

 "set" would be firmly fixed, and exhibited as naturally as any 

 other characteristic, and from this our present-day setters could be 

 evolved, with no greater change than marks the improvement of 

 other breeds from the original types. That portion of the original 

 class which was not educated, would transmit only the character- 

 istics originally possessed by all. All spaniels have delighted in 

 the pursuit of game from time immemorial. This is purely in- 

 stinctive, and thus we have to-day in our setters and spaniels the 

 same common love for hunting, with just such difference in action 

 upon game as marks descent from the educated or uneducated 

 portion of the original stock. 



THE SETTER. 



By all recognized authorities the setter is regarded as the de- 

 scendant of the land-spaniel. In the ancestral line he has existed 

 in England for over four centuries, and is pronounced by Stone- 

 henge to be the most national of all dogs found there. At what 

 period he first became a setter is not known, but in Daniel's 

 "Rural Sports" there appears a copy of a bond given by John 

 Harris, October 7, 1485, in which he covenants "to keep and 

 break a certain spaniel to set partridges and other game, for ten 

 shillings of lawful English money." Stonehenge says, " A Duke 

 of Northumberland trained one to set birds in 1555, and shortly 

 after the setter was produced." Writing of the " Setting Spaniel," 

 Richard Surflet, who wrote in the year 1600, said, " There is 

 another sort of land-span ny els which are called setters, and they 

 differ nothing from the former but in instruction and obedience, 

 for these must neither hunte, range, nor retaine, more or less, than 

 as the master appointeth, taking the whole .limit of whatsoever 

 they do from the eie or hand of their instructor. They must 

 never quest at any time, what occasion soever shall happen, but as 

 being dogs without voices, so they must hunt close and mute. 

 And when they come upon the haunt of that they hunt, they shall 



