290 The Dog Book 
show of 1876, entered as Russian setters, and have always had the idea 
that they were closely related to the rough griffon. They also might have 
been descended from some rough-coated tracking hounds which ‘developed 
pointing instincts and were then made use of with the gun. 
Lee quotes from Sydenham Edwards, 1805, that the pointer was first 
introduced in England from Portugal by a merchant who traded with that 
country, and was first used by a man.named Bechill, a resident of Norfolk, 
“who could shoot flying.” It was also said that Bechill was a “reduced 
baron,” and that the importation of this Portuguese pointer was made 
at a very modern period. Presuming that to be all true, there were many 
pointers in England before that one arrived from Portugal. We have 
already proved that shooting flying was well known in England in 1711 
and if not known on the Continent at an equally early date, it was so at 
least sixty years before Edwards wrote, and over pointers. We show 
proof of that in a copy of a painting, by the German artist Ridinger, of a 
French gentleman with his pointers. As this engraving has both a French 
and a German title, we presume it was published in France, and although 
the German title of Reise ‘ager has but the one meaning of the travelling 
or moving sportsman, the French title, “Ze Chasseur au vol,” can 
be rendered as the flying sportsman or the on-the-wing sportsman; what we 
would call “the wingshot.” ‘The painting certainly does not admit of the 
interpretation of a travelling sportsman, but of one resting after shooting or 
just returned from shooting. 
The pointers are well drawn, and all much similar in type, showing 
altogether different character and makeup from the Spanish type, and at 
about the same time as Ridinger we know that Desportes was painting 
French pointers which bore no resemblance to the Spanish dog, showing 
that that heavily-built animal had nothing to do with the production of the 
pointing dog of France and Germany. 
We can readily understand how the heavy Spanish dog became plentiful 
in England. Communication and commerce were by water in preference 
to expensive and tedious land travel, and English trade with Spain was 
very extensive, so that more dogs came from Spain to England than from 
the interior of the Continent, and with far less trouble. Another suggestion 
is that the dogs of France and England were nearer alike, and the appearance 
of a French dog would not be at all noticeable compared with that of the 
heavy, strongly-built dog from Spain. 
