The Bob-Tailed Sheep Dog 381 
The evidence presented in this and the preceding chapter is sufficient 
to show that there is no trace of this variety of sheep dog much farther 
back than 1800. He was not known by Caius, or to the later author 
of the “Foure Bookes of Husbandry.” We cannot say that we have a 
very pronounced opinion, but it is fully as strong as that of the New Yorker 
who seeks to evade jury duty and swears that he has an opinion requiring 
evidence to remove, and our opinion is this: The bob-tailed sheep dog 
such as was seen thirty years ago was by no means so large as the modern 
fancy developed dog, but was of a more useful size, akin to that of the 
smooth drover’s dog, and the only known dog that he then resembled was 
the Russian setter, pointer or retriever, as he was variously called. Very 
few dog men of the present have any knowledge of that setter, but whenever 
we have been asked about their appearance we have always said that they 
looked more like a lightly built bob-tailed sheep dog reduced to the size 
of a large setter, than anything we have knowledge of. If the reader turns 
to the representation of “The Pointer,” by Sydenham Edwards, in the 
chapter on the pointer, Part IV., he will there see what the head of the 
Russian dog looked like, and note for himself the strong resemblance to 
what the sheep dog must have been before being improved to his present 
standard. 
This Russian dog is not known now, but he was far from being un- 
common some time prior to 1800, and was well known for some time after 
that. In the chapter on the pointer we have quoted the Rev. Mr. Simons 
to the effect that the Earl of Powis had some which were said to have come 
from Lorraine, and describes them as being sullen in disposition. Colonel 
Hamilton we also quoted from as having owned some of them, and his 
shooting was in Oxfordshire. Another who tended to bring them into 
prominent notice was the late Joseph Lang, a well-known gun maker of 
London. A year ago we called at the present Lang establishment when 
visiting London, but there was nothing to be obtained in the way of pictures, 
the only record of the old gentleman’s connection with the breed being his 
letter to “Craven” in the “Young Sportsman’s Manual.” In this letter 
Mr. Lang states that he visited an old friend in Somersetshire for a week’s 
shooting and had his best setters “beaten hollow” by his friend’s dogs, 
which were bred from pure Russian setters, crossed with an English setter 
which had once belonged to Joseph Manton. Determined to beat the 
Russians, Mr. Lang next season purchased two exceptionally fine setters in 
