The English better 141 



took Doctor Rowe to task he was treated to a three-column reply, from which 

 we take the following: "We have asked how it is that Dan is a Llewellyn 

 setter when he is a Duke-Rhcebe and nothing else; how it is that dogs which 

 are not Duke-RhcEbe can be Llewellyns; and how if Duke-Rhcebe-Laverack 

 equals a Llewellyn, Duke-Laverack, or Rhcebe-Laverack can equal the same 

 thing. The question was asked in all seriousness, and the reply is: 'Your 

 statements are vaporous effusions' — 'You know more about Kentucky 

 widows than about breeding setters' — 'You are a feather-bed sportsman' 

 — 'You are one of those talkative, effervescing little fellows' — 'You are a 

 bottle of soda water.' 



"We now have another question to ask, and if Messrs. Buckell and 

 Llewellyn cannot answer it, perhaps Mr. Smith can. Admitting that Mr. 

 Llewellyn has a right to the title he claims, that all combinations of Duke- 

 Rhoebe-Laverack are Llewellyns, how can he claim the progeny of Dash IL 

 to be Llewellyns when they have other blood than that to which the so-called 

 Llewellyn breed was limited by the definition ? We can ask a great many 

 other questions as difficult for Messrs. Buckell, Llewellyn and Smith to 

 answer satisfactorily, but we have asked sufficient for the present; when 

 Mr. Smith and his friends answer those which have been asked it will be 

 time to ask the others." — American Field, May lo, 1884. 



"We repeat Mr. Llewellyn has not any right to the title which he has 

 claimed, and the idea that the term 'Llewellyn setter' has served as the ex- 

 ponent of a principle is absurd. In the first place, as we have said before, 

 Mr. Llewellin was not the originator of the plan of breeding the setters he 

 claims as his own; he borrowed it; Messrs. Statter and Field had bred in 

 the manner Mr. Llewellyn began to breed before Mr. Llewfellyn owned any 

 one of the dogs which he afterward bred from. 



" When we published the letters proposing that the title should be con- 

 ferred on Mr. Llewellyn, we were asked to endorse the claim, which we 

 positively refused to do and did not do for the reason that we did not con- 

 sider Mr. Llewellyn entitled to it, and regarded it as cheap veneer, an 

 imitation of Mr. Laverack." . . . "That we admitted the title to the 

 dogs and styled them by it in our columns is not any more evidence that we 

 endorsed it than that we endorsed it when we published the letters conferring 

 the title. We received several private letters at the time asking if we 

 approved of it, to which we replied we decidedly did not." . . . "The 



