244 The Sporting Dog 



tions is that if one side of the house is big, the 

 other should be little, or vice versa ; so with fine 

 and coarse. If a man has a potterer, he thinks to 

 get the golden mean by breeding to an uncon- 

 trollable bolter. The favorite formula among Eng- 

 lish setter men is to get into the pedigree fifty per 

 cent of Laverack and fifty per cent of Duke-Rhoebe 

 blood. I suppose that in a year or two pointer 

 men will begin to figure on the same percentages 

 with King of Kent and Mainspring. One man 

 has childlike faith in the rule of a big dam and a 

 small, nervous sire. Another believes in the small 

 dam and the big, masculine, rugged sire. Some 

 purists hang out a " no trespass " sign against an 

 outcross. This has come to be a fetich with many 

 field dog breeders, though the Llewellins are the 

 result of a sharp outcross and though in pointers 

 Mainspring and Rip Rap both came from a cross 

 of Devonshire pointers on the Drake and Hamlet 

 blood. Another set of breeders are perpetually 

 looking for crosses, though the records should tell 

 them that a cross, while often useful and necessary, 

 is in many more cases a grasping at the shadow 

 and losing the substance. 



Inbreeding is a subject of most positive opin- 

 ions and most baseless sermonizing. Perhaps 

 nine people out of ten believe that inbreeding 

 produces puny and degenerate descendants. Like 

 other breeding practices, sometimes it does and 



