58 The Sporting Dog 



It will be seen that Mr. Llewellin's dogs were a 

 combination of Laverack with the Duke-Rhoebe 

 blood. These two foundations of the Llewellin 

 kennel differed so widely in characteristics that 

 the great variations in the appearance and quality 

 of their descendants are not remarkable. The 

 Laveracks were usually small or of medium size. 

 Rhoebe was very large herself and gave to all her 

 progeny a tendency to size. To this day it is the 

 case that some Llewellins look like Laveracks 

 and some like Dan and his mother. Some do 

 not weigh over thirty pounds, while occasional 

 specimens run up almost to seventy pounds. If 

 we assume that vigor, good sense, and level dis- 

 position were the characteristics of the Duke- 

 Rhoebes, whereas it is known that the pure 

 Laveracks as a rule were not remarkable for 

 mental qualities, at least in field work on birds, 

 it seems that the irregularities in this respect 

 which are noticed in the Llewellins may be at- 

 tributed to the two different foundation elements 

 used by the originator of the strain. Llewellins 

 are sometimes brilliant, sometimes commonplace, 

 and sometimes worthless. In the families which 

 are bred by active patrons of field trials there is 

 of late years a marked tendency to uniformity, 

 but the type so suggested is by no means a 

 general rule among even dogs bred by these gen- 

 tlemen. This type should, however, be described, 



