CHAPTER III 



POINTER FAMILIES 



That nation is happiest which has no history. 

 Such is the good fortune of the pointer. While 

 the annals of that breed in America are to the 

 full as important as those of the setter, there are 

 few tales of conflict. The pointer men have been 

 at unity in essentials from the beginning. There 

 have been no quarrels over standards for the 

 bench and not many discussions except among 

 partisans of individual dogs. The question of 

 color has aroused no antagonism. There is no 

 strife over blood lines and families, since all 

 pointers of consequence descend practically from 

 the same English sources and along the same 

 channels. 



In 1870 the pointers, like the setters, consisted 



of what the writers choose to call " natives " ; that 



is, dogs descended from irregular importations 



and different in every locality. There were 



many of the solid liver color, and occasionally a 



man took pride in a specimen of the double-nose 



or split-nose variety. This miscellaneous native 



stock quickly disappeared after the field trial 



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