THE SETTER. 169 
a general thing, that the setter need not suffer, while the 
great preponderance of snipe and marsh-shooting gives him 
the preference. 
The only portion of the United States, in which I 
should consider the pointer preferable, is the dry prairies 
of the West, where it is frequently indispensable to carry 
out water for the dogs in grouse-shooting, which takes 
place in the intolerably hot weather, on those treeless 
plains, of August and the earlier part of September. 
A prodigious quantity of nonsense has been written 
under the pretext of ascertaining or deriving the original 
breed and stock of the setter—some writers insisting that 
he is a treble or quadruple mongrel, part setter, part 
pointer, and some add, part Newfoundland and part fox- 
hound. 
One sporting writer—wonders will never cease !—and 
he a man of some repute both as a sportsman and an 
authority, has actually given a receipt in one of his works, 
for manufacturing a setter. He desires the aspirant for 
the possession of a perfect dog of this breed, of which he 
records his own opinion, that it is the best in the world, to 
cross a foxhound with a pointer, and to recross the pro- 
geny with the low small Newfoundland of St. Johns. The 
offspring of this last cross is to be the given setter. 
And this, as if there were not half a dozen pure and 
distinct families of setters reproducing themselves to the 
smallest distinctive mark of shape, coat and color, genera- 
tion after generation, in England alone, without taking into 
consideration the Russian and Irish varieties. 
He had precisely ag well, in order to raisea London 
8 
