84 The Dog Book 
Still another authority upon the widespread use of the net for part- 
ridges is no less than Martin Luther. This eminent reformer was in 1521 
kept, for his own safety, a prisoner by the Elector of Saxony at Wartburg, 
and although we have not succeeded in getting chapter and page for the 
following quotation, it is from a thoroughly reliable source, for all other 
quotations we have been in a position to verify have been absolutely ac- 
curate. “I was,” wrote Luther, “lately two days sporting in the country; 
we killed a brace of hares and took some partridges, a very pretty employ- 
ment for an idle man! However, I could not help theologizing amidst dogs, 
missile weapons and nets; for I thought to myself, do not we, in hunting 
innocent animals to death, very much resemble the devil who by crafty 
wiles, and the instrument of wicked priests, is seeking continually whom 
he may devour?” 
Tue SETTING SPANIEL 
The second English book on sports of the chase is the “Book of St. 
Albans,” as it is called, attributed to Dame Juliana Bernes. “Spanyells” 
are mentioned, but with no description, and we can pass to the first real dog 
book in the language. Yet it was originally written in Latin, having been 
prepared by Dr. John Kays (Johannes Caius), the founder of Caius College, 
Cambridge, for the use of the naturalist, Conrad Gesner, who had asked 
him for information about “such dogges as were ingendred within the bor- 
ders of England.” Dr. Kays, or Caius, as he is generally called, published 
this Latin book about 1570, and after his death it was translated into English 
by his friend and admirer, Abraham Fleming, and published in 1576. 
Fleming assures his readers in a laudatory preface that Dr. Caius spared no 
pains to procure all possible information and then to reduce his facts to 
the smallest proportion. The second part of his “discourse” is devoted 
to dogs used in fowling—by which was meant the taking of all manner of 
birds—and these dogs he divides into two kinds, those used on land and 
those that found game on the water. To the dog used with the net he 
gives the specific name of Setter; those used in hawking, he says, are called 
dogs for the falcon, pheasant or partridge, but that the common sort of peo- 
ple call them all spaniels. The third division of this section is devoted to 
the water spaniel or finder. The entire section is not so long that it cannot 
be given in full and permit readers to judge for themselves of the dogs men- 
