The Pointer 287 
The pointer then put up the hare and the greyhound ran it down. It 
would be natural for a custom to survive so far from the centre of up-to- 
date sport as Stirling was for many years after it had ceased to be practised 
in the more advanced sporting counties of England, such as Yorkshire or 
Norfolk. At the time Major Topham penned the statements quoted he 
was one of the most prominent coursing men of England, and had just 
completed the critical and explanatory preface to Scott’s beautifully illus- 
trated edition of Somerville’s “The Chase.” He was not the kind of man 
to give a wrong name to the dog he was speaking of, and the repetition of 
the statement clears away any doubt as to the dog he meant to specify. 
It should also be borne in mind that modern coursing was not established 
until about 1776, when Lord Offord organised the Swaffham Coursing 
Club, so that some relics of old-time methods might well have remained 
into the eighteenth century and the pointer not improbably have been used 
to locate the hare. 
As to improving this finding hound into the gun dog, we can see no 
obstacle to the acceptance of the conclusion arrived at. These dogs were 
led when they followed the trail or located game, and it not being their 
business to rouse the quarry on all occasions, they or some of them undoubt- 
edly became accustomed to stand, or to their being checked when close 
to the game, just as headstrong dogs are broken with the check cord to 
the present day. Undoubtedly some of them developed on their own 
account this standing when close to the game, and were used to breed from 
on that account. Then when a dog was wanted for use with the improved 
gun, this pointing hound was the one that was found to be exactly the thing 
needed. That of itself will account for the hound type of the early pointers, 
dogs which were painted long prior to what we know were actual crosses 
between the pointer and foxhound as made by Colonel Thornton, who 
was copied by others, at the close of the eighteenth century, and will also 
account for no serious harm from such a reversion to the parent stock of 
the hound.* 
* Since the chapter on the pointer was written we have come across some very important testimony on this 
point. When in Philadelphia for the Wissahickon dog show in June, 1905, we found among other useful prints that of 
shooting flying from horseback. No one could tell us where it came from, so a copy of the engraving was sent to Lon- 
don and our correspondent was exceedingly fortunate to come across the “Sportsman’s Dictionary,” second edition, 
1735, which not only had all the plates of the edition but nine extra plates from an earlier quarto book on sports. The 
two volumes contain nothing regarding pointers, the name never being mentioned, but under “Bloodhound” we found 
this: ‘‘Some are of that nature that when they have found the game they will stand still till the huntsman come up, 
to whom in silence, by their face, eye and tail, they show the game.” This “Sportsman’s Dictionary,” we soon found, 
copied liberally from older writers, and we have traced the complete bloodhound article through several books as far 
