CHAPTER V 



AMERICAN LLEWELLINS 



At the beginning of a brief series of English 

 setter studies, it may be as well to dispose at 

 once of the notion that there was ever a " native 

 stock " having any attributes of an established 

 family. It is surprising that any man should 

 mention the term in that sense ; yet I have 

 heard it used frequently by old sportsmen and 

 it often crops out in letters to the sporting 

 papers, apparently conveying the assumption 

 that there was a more or less fixed American 

 strain before the Llewellins and Laveracks 

 began to cut a figure. It almost goes without 

 saying that the " native stock " was simply what 

 it happened to be in each of a thousand locali- 

 ties. For generations before the Civil War — 

 that period coinciding almost exactly with the 

 establishment of field trials and regular records 

 in England — both setters and pointers had been 

 brought over at frequent intervals and had left 

 their progeny at different points from Maine 

 to Florida, and as far into the interior as enter- 

 prising field shots had then penetrated. Men's 



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