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1 02 WILDFO H L SHOO TING IN THE WES TERN S TA TES, 



curly. This was the dam. The sire was an otter 

 hound, bought on Tyneside, a thorough good repre- 

 sentative of the old type, hard haired, and showing 

 a tendency to be knock-kneed ; coat very hard and 

 straight. I had intended breeding the bitch to a 

 Newfoundland of good parts, but an accident occurred, 

 similar to that which procured us the valuable strain 

 in our thoroughbreds, viz., the Godolphin blood. 



Boatswain, for so I called him, would have been 

 drowned, as all his brothers and sisters were, had 

 not a friend's little boy taken an inordinate fancy to 

 him. He took to retrieving naturally before he 

 was three months old, and would swim across the 

 Rock River in a flood, a month afterwards, yet for 

 all this he was the ugliest, biggest-jointed, and 

 slackest put together puppy that I ever saw. At 

 maturity his coat was the counterpart of his sire's, 

 in other respects he followed his dam. I ever had a 

 horror of mongrels about me, and possess the antipathy 

 now, but Boatswain is a privileged being, and is as 

 popular with my guests as with his master. I had 

 serious thoughts once of bringing him to England, 

 just to show how smart an American-bred dog 

 could be, but I think my neighbours wr ild have gone 

 demented if deprived of his society. 



As I have above said, I am far from partial to curs, 

 yet for a person who requires a retriever for trans- 

 atlantic water-fowl shooting, I think if he could get 

 the progenitors, he might io worse than make the 

 experiment that turned out for me such a " ten 

 stroke." I am at present debarred from repeating 

 it, for I have lost both parents. However, I have 

 reason to hope that through the instrumentality of 

 friends the breed can be replaced. 



But after all, retrievers — if you except the Irish 

 water, and some other spaniels — which by successive 

 crossing are but mongrels, sprang from mingling 

 different breeds, until the desired result is obtained, 



