Early :Spaniels and Setters 87 
water such fowle’as be’ stounge to death by any: venemous worme, we vse 
them also to bring vs- our boultes & arrowes out of the water (missing our 
marcke) whereat we directed our leuell, which otherwise we should hardly 
recouer, and oftentimes the restore to vs our shaftes which we: thought neuer to 
se, touche or handle: againe, after they were lost, for which circumstances 
they are called Inquisitores, searchers, and finders. Although the ducke otherwhiles 
notably deceaueth both the dogge and the master, by’ dyuing vnder the water, and 
also by naturall subtility, for if any man shall approache to the place where they 
builde, breede, and syt, the hennes go out of their neastes, offering themselues 
voluntarily to the hands, as it were, of such as draw nie their neastes. And a certaine 
weaknesse of their winges pretended, and infirmitie of their feete dissembled, they 
go so slowely and so leisurely, that to a man’s thinking it were no masteryes to take 
them. By which deceiptful tricke they doe as it were entyse and allure men to 
follow thein, tll they be drawn a long distance from theyr neastes, which being 
compassed by their prouident conning, or conning providence they cut of all incon- 
ueniences which might growe of their returne, by using many carefull and curious 
caucates, least theyr often haunting bewray ye place where the young ducklings 
be hatched. Great therefore is theyr desire, & earnest is theyr study to take heede, 
not only to theyr broode but also to themselues. For when they haue an ynklin 
that they are espied they hide themselves vnder turfes or sedges, wherewith they. 
couer and shrowde themselues so closely and so craftely, that (notwithstanding the 
place where they lurke be found and perfectly perceaued) there they will harbour 
without harme, except the water spaniell by quicke smelling discouer theyr de- 
ceiptes. 
It will be observed that the common spaniels of that period were the 
particolours, but what Doctor Caius calls red was probably liver coloured, 
that having always been a more common colour than red in the spaniel; so 
that advocates of the lately installed Welsh spaniel will do well not to 
take Doctor Caius’s red and white spaniel as indicative of the early origin 
of the dog lately given that name. The book was written at Cambridge, 
and no mention is made of the red and whites as confined to the principality 
or any section of England; he simply says they were the commonest-coloured 
dog of all the spaniels. The marbled or blue-belton colour mentioned as 
from France is in keeping with the note as to Gaston de Foix’s description of 
colour in the quotation from “The Master of Game.” Black and tan is 
also seen to be an old spaniel colour, and therefore not originating in the 
Gordon setters or their immediate ancestors. 
Following close upon the time of Fleming’s publication we come upon 
a very excellent book written by Gervase Markham, 1567-1637, a very 
voluminous writer on sporting subjects. We are not prepared to say that 
all he wrote was original, for it was the custom to take whole chapters from 
