302 The Dog Book 



thing forced upon our attention is that all stud dogs have to bow to the 

 great Price's Bang. We can only reach Hamlet through him at this dis- 

 tance, except in a very occasional cross, but we meet Bang everywhere, 

 and that not only in the good-looking dogs shown at the shows, but the 

 field dogs go back to him with even more intensity than do the exhibition 

 specimens. There was Mainspring, one of the dogs to show our field- 

 trials men that setters were not bound to win everything. He was by 

 Bang's son Champion Mike. If we take Mainspring's son Jingo and 

 look at his dam's pedigree we find her grandsire was by that other remark- 

 able son of the old dog. Young Bang; while there is a double cross in the 

 grandam of the dam of Jingo, Kent Bitters, by Champion Priam, by Young 

 Bang out of Hops, by Champion Mike. If we turn to Rip-Rap we find that 

 he is a grandson of Champion Priam, who was bred to Kent Baby, a grand- 

 daughter of Bang, and produced that excellent dog Champion King of 

 Kent, sire of Rip-Rap. The latter's dam was by Champion Mike. Then 

 all the Graphic line, all the Croxteth, all Vandervort's Don's descendants, 

 have come from Bang. You not only cannot get away from the Bang 

 blood, but the more you can get in a pedigree the better your dog is likely 

 to be. Mr. Wise, in an interesting article in Recreation on dogs he 

 had owned, wound up by saying that he had decided to breed his Beulah 

 IV. to Strideaway, because of his three crosses of Bang. 



A very interesting sketch of Price's Bang in manuscript, but which we 

 arjB convinced was copied from some English paper, has been in our pos- 

 session for some time, and we would willingly give credit to the author 

 if we knew who he was. From the style and the amount of information 

 we are inclined to believe it is one of Mr. Lowe's articles, and no more 

 reliable writer ever penned a sketch than "Leatherhead." If the author 

 is anyone else he will not object to our saying that it is equal to anything 

 Mr. Lowe ever wrote. 



"There is hardly a country in the world where sporting dogs are 

 used that has not boasted at some time or other of a descendant of Bang. 

 They have been eagerly sought after from Australia, New Zealand, the 

 Cape, America, Spain, Germany, France, Russia, to our knowledge, and 

 it can hardly be saying too much when we assert that his stock were more 

 generally known than that of any dog that ever figured in the stud book. 

 Bang was bred by his owner, Sam Price, in 1870; so he lived to the ripe 

 old age of 13^ years. He was got by Mr. Coham's Bang, son of Mr. White- 



