The Cocker Spaniel B57 
Premier just touched the top limit of. weight.when in. condition. The 
well-known and much-liked Mr. George Dunn was a welcome visitor at 
New York this year, and his successes with Freedom, Rose of Ruby, Pre- 
tender and Black Knight of Woodstock, a dog he did better with on other 
occasions, were well received. Mr. C. H. Mason introduced us to Surprise, 
a black bitch, which. hardly realised all the expectations of her owner, 
though in every class shown she was one of the placed bitches, and took two 
firsts, including that in open. The judging was a little ragged here and 
there on this occasion, such, for instance, as a very pretty little red, Pitti 
Sing, getting no mention in puppy class, second in novice, and reserve in 
open, while Mr. Payne’s good particolour Romany Rye was second in one 
class and dropped back to highly commended in his next one. It must be 
said, however, that the classes were large, the puppy class having thirty 
entries alone, and the task set the judge was as difficult as was ever given 
a man at New York, on account of the evenness of some of the competitions 
and perhaps a lack of strength on the whole. 
During the past five years it has not seemed to us that much advance 
has been made in cockers. The decrease i in size is not to our mind, for, 
although it is the custom to talk of merry little cockers, they are yet dogs 
‘intended for work, and some of. the champions, even of the: present: day, 
are not much heavier than good-sized toy spaniels and are shorter on the 
leg. The change in the weights of the cockers made four years. ago was 
not because it was absolutely desirable to get smaller dogs, but: because they 
could not be kept up in size to what was formerly the case when they ran 
from twenty-two pounds, as a small dog, up to the limit of twenty-eight, 
and shown light at that. We can very well remember being taken to task 
by nearly every spaniel man except the owner of a neat cocker of about 
nineteen pounds which we had placed up in the prize list at a prominent 
show in the New York district. A very short time ago we were judging 
the breed, and in one class there was a most diminutive specimen, of which 
we asked the weight. “Eighteen pounds.” ‘That is the low limit. We 
would have liked to put her on the scales, but there were none at the show, 
for on looking at the catalogue we found she was a champion, and we are 
very well certain that unless fed up for the occasion she could not scale the 
required weight. Yet this toy was not so very much smaller than the run 
of the cockers of the present day as to excite any particular ‘comment, 
whereas twenty-five years ago she might have got a highly commended 
