220 The Dog Book 
sportsman, a connection of mine, who was shooting in the Quarters. He 
told me Dash was the best spaniel he had ever had, that he fetched his game 
tender mouthed, and that if any other dog attempted to touch it he instantly 
fell on him and drove him off. These dogs are red and white, strongly 
made in the chest and hind quarters, and have an intelligent countenance. 
They are in general not good tempered.” 
It will thus be seen that Colonel Hamilton was not giving a beginning 
of the century recollection about the Clumber, but was speaking of quite 
a modern dog, so far as his knowledge was concerned, so that Mr. Mercer 
was not quite justified in the way he suggested that Colonel Hamilton 
wrote of the Clumber of the “early days of the century.” But to Mr. 
Mercer is due the credit of being the first to draw the attention of dog men 
to Colonel Hamilton as a writer on the breed.. 
Dalziel, with all his Scotch pertinacity and inclination to get to the bot- 
tom of his subject, could only suggest, by way of an excuse almost, for some- 
thing better, that the Noailles dogs were Bassets, but he was too shrewd 
an observer not to disarm criticism by saying that the muteness was a con- 
tradiction to the supposition of any hound cross. He says that it is difficult 
to understand how the great difference between the Clumber and the 
sprightly cocker came about; in the long barrel, short legs and general 
heavy and inactive appearance, with the heavy head, large truncated 
muzzle, deep eyes, sometimes showing the haw. But the Clumber is not 
any longer, if as long, in proportion to his height than the black field spaniel, 
and what was that dog twenty-five years ago? In the days of Brush the 
field spaniel was mainly a large cocker, and it was not until the time that 
Mr. Jacobs took hold of it, and others followed, that we got the very great 
length that we still have. Was there such a wonderful lot of difference.at 
that time between the Sussex and Clumber as to puzzle any one to imagine 
they both could not be genuine spaniels? Look at the dual illustration of 
the Sussex and Clumber in “The Book of the Dog,” published less than 
thirty years ago, and which would be which if they were colourless. 
The haw is not necessarily indicative of hound blood. If it was would 
we not have it in all hounds? What causes it is the weight of the flews, 
and in all breeds with an extra development of lip and loose skin there is 
the aptitude to have the lower lid pulled down from the eye. We get it 
in the mastiff, the St. Bernard, the Clumber, the Sussex, and the Gordon 
at times. The English Spaniel Club now proposes doing away with the 
