£>bobmbkk16,1880.1 



JFOREST AND STREAM. 



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D. S. GREGORY, Jr.'s, BELLE. 



in the U. S," await witli the greatest anxiety his "few lines 

 on the breeding, rearing and brealdng of cockers," but I 

 doubt if they will convey the amount of "pleasure andbene- 

 lit " which he seems to anticipate 



I have to thanlc "Shamrock" for his letter, v.'hirh is such 

 a contrast in its liberality and pertinency to tlie preceding 

 one, and will gladly put the " Lachine itennel " down for a 

 like amount towaa-d a speeinl prize, though that comes more 

 properly ■witlun the provmce of the club. 



To "Senez" I will say that the only reason for uiy accept- 

 ing the secretaryship pn/ i&m, was in order that interested 

 people nii:;lit send me their names so that a list could be made 

 of those to wliiiiii lo sciid just such circulars a.s he suggest-?. 

 llowel'i- ■> T' t,( imnw to Avlmm to send them ? And 

 FoBEH'i : is doing quite enough in giving us 



space V lintr to the trouble (which I am willing 



to und(-i ii ' oiling such a li.st. 



I am much obliged to Mr. Fellow.? for his letter, and what 

 he says in to the point. 



To"M. B." also thanks are due for the letter from his 

 friend, which is more e.vact (according to my humble opinion) 

 than anything I have seen yet. 



To " Cocker " I would say that we do not and did not in- 

 tend lo call a meeting now, but wished to get things in run- 

 ning order before the next New York show, during which 

 shdw it would be best to hold the first annual meeting, as 

 there would be more cocker men collected then than at"aiiy 

 other time. 



I find that I have got into this "cocker standard " business 



much morn deeply than I intended, and will be betterpleasod 



to be in futme referred to not by my name, but by my now. 



deplume, which I suppose is well enough known, of 



EVmbeth, N. J. Dido. 



Feankxin, N. T., Dec. 4 

 Eddtor Forest and Stream : 

 VTm ve iust rend the several interestiDg letters in last issvieof 



' ' "- f ' ^ ' en the cocker question, which is so 

 ! I : I 1 he bench show cla.ss of cocker men at 

 I ' mo as if " Senex," from Ann Arbor, 



liMssiiLi: ' iuat appears the most feasible of any 



as yet . : j I at the matter, and in an easy, correct 



and Sail . . :icr bolli to the breeders and" those di- 



rectly iiii-n >;,,.., . :Li,i, [i, the breed itself, and shmdd no l.vetter 

 way bepvr~|.iif'U very snon T thiiik it would meet v,itli the 

 approbalion of all broBdi-rs riud onvneRtly interested ones for 

 Ihe welfavo of this breeii. T do nut say all intending exhibi- 

 tors, however, as it never would he scllled to their satisfac- 

 tion it is evident. But siioidd it meet willi the approval of 

 Biich breeders as P. F. Pit'-her. Clia-^. Aden, 0. B. Cum- 

 mings, J. H. Whitniii, '^ '■■;,:: ).>ed. Iloe, Geort:o D. 



Macdougall and oIIh : r. matter calmly in iho 



face and for the liesl i, . i ireed and its futme v. r'_ 



fare, it will certainly ;. .:..■ approval of nnstli as 



well, provided, of com-SH, ikal FfiKEBT A-rn Stream faces in- 

 to lino with such assistance us is necessary In properiv facili- 

 tate it; the expense of wlrtcli I can assure you will be olieer- 

 fulljr canceled by the cocker nieu whose shoulders an- at Ihn 

 wheel in this matter. Such circulars slioidd need to be sent 

 out, I should think, through the several Bponsinen's jonrnalg 

 Of the land in order to reach all interested ones in tlie Uniled 

 States, and the committee of three cliosen to make tlie stan- 

 dard should call through the sportsmen's journals for [tostal 

 card views to show what their ideas of a proper standuid is, 

 and then this committee should carefully pentse tliese views 

 and make a standard which ought to be accepted, of comse 

 subj'ect to various amendments as time might reveal it to be 

 advieali' r ^ ' ■' Tit, etc. As to color.' any color belong- 

 ing to i :-hould be eligible. Should this plan 

 meet ■• A of others, and also your co-opei-ation, 

 fm-thci i...,.ii,...,,,,, upon the various late letters published 

 wovild of course be unnecessary. M. P. MoKoos. 



A FiSK Mastiff.— Mr. D. A. Smieton, Cranford, N. J., 

 has just retm-ned from England by the steamer Circassia of 

 the Anchor Line, which arrived iu this port last week. Mr. 

 Smieton brought with him a very handsome yoimg mastUf, 

 Zulu, by Champion Colonel, out of Diana ; commended at 

 the late Dundee Show. Zulu has a remarkably short head, 

 and, in this respect, ia a great improvement oil most of the 

 dogs that are benched in this cpimtry. The Dundee Sliow 

 was declared by the judges to have an anuaually flT^ft class of 

 piastiSs this year, 



BELLE. 



BELLE is owned by D. S. Gregory, Jr., of this city, and 

 is a very handsome, clean-cut lemon and white pointer 

 puppy of eleven months. She is by Sensation, out of Mr. 

 Luke Yf. White's Champion Grace; she by Match out of 

 Nell. A full pedigree of the sire and dam of Grace cannot be 

 given at this time, but a letter from her owner, Mr. White, 

 may prove interesting : "I have just written to the owners 

 of Match and Nell for full pedigrees of both dogs. I think it 

 wilt take time to get them, as the breeder of Match lives in 

 England. About seven yetirsago I went to live at Plymouth, 

 Conu. f saw then for the first time Match, a large handsome 

 lemon and white pointer dog, with a head something like 

 Sensation's. Mr. Oliver Bryant, the owner, let me sliool 

 over him. He was a grand field dog, head up, fine nose and 

 style. I spoke to Mr. Wm. Morton, the then owner of a 

 black and white ticked bitch known as Perm's Nell. She 

 was bred in Litchfield, Conn., from imported stock. Nell 

 was famous in that part of the country for field qualities. 

 The cross was agreed upon aud my little Grace was the 

 choice of the litter. I knew Grace would breed well to Sen- 

 sation on account of his grand head." Belle cannot be too 

 Viiglily spoken of as a lield dog. She is one of the best we 

 have ever seen of her age. She easily secured the first prize 

 in the Nursery stakes, and in the Puppy stakes fourth prize. 



THE RUSSIAN SETTER. 



[Beprinted from ndvance sheets of Vero. Shaw's "Book of the Dog," 

 f m-nishcd to the Foeest and Stkeam by the author, through 

 Cassell, Fetter, Galpui & Co., publishers, No. 596 Broadway, 



New York.] 



ANY book professing to refer to sporting dogs wotdd, we 

 think, bo incomplete if no reference were made by the 

 author to the Russian Setter. Tliis breed of dog is unriU'S- 

 tionaljly rarely met with in these islands, but some years ago 

 his appearance made a considerable stir among all followers 

 of the gun. It is certain, too, that his services were in some 

 quarters crdlod upon to improve the English Setter, aud 

 therefore, in spite of the dog's rarity in his pm-e state, it is 

 desirable that he should be treated of in a chapter by liim- 

 -setf, though necessarily the remarks concerning him will be 



jvLF. .Tosi ph Lang, writing to the Sporting Metiew in 1841, 

 ;ii d iiatirig from No. 7 Haymarket, thtis alludes to the Rus- 



'• In the sea.^on of 1839 I was asked for a week's shooting 

 iujn fSomeisetshire by an old friend, whose science in eveiy- 

 thing conueoted with sporting ia firat-rate. Then, for tfie 

 first lime for many 3'ear8, I liad my English setters beateu 

 hollow. His breed was from pm'o Russian setters crossed 

 bv an English setter dog, which some years ago made a sen- 

 sation in the sporting world from his extraordinary per- 

 formances. . . . jUthough I could not but remark the e.x- 

 cellcnce of my friend's dogs, yet it struck me, as I had shot 

 over my own old favorite setter (who had himself beat many 

 good ones, and had never before been beaten) for eight years, 

 that his nose cotdd not have been right, for the Russians got 

 three points to his one. I therefore jesolved to try some 

 others against them the next season, and having heard a 

 gentleman, well-known as an excellent judge, speak of a 

 brace of extraordinary young dogs he had seen in the York- 

 shire moons, with his recommendation I purchased them. I 

 shot to them in .Vugust last, and their beauty and style of 

 performance wi-re spoken of in tenns of high praise by a cor- 

 respondent to a sporting paper. In .September I took them 

 into Somersetshire, fuUy anticipatmg that 1 should give the 

 Russians the go-by, but I wa-s again disappointed. I found 

 from the wide ranging of my dogs, and the noise coiuequeut 

 upon their going so fast through the stubbles and turnips 

 (particularly in the middle of tiie day when the sun was pow- 

 erful aud there was but little seentj that they constantly put 

 up their birds out of distance, or, if they did get a point, 

 tJiat the game wotdd rarely lie tUl we could get it. The 

 RuBsians, on the contrary, being much closer rangests, quar- 



tering their ground steadily, heads and taUs up, and possess- 

 ing perfection of nose in extreme heat, wet or cold, enabled 

 us to bag double the head of game that mine did. Nor did 

 they lose one solitary wounded bird ; whereas, with my own 

 dogs I lost six brace the first two days of partridge shooting, 

 most or them in standing corn. 



"My friend having met with a severe accident while hunt- 

 ing last season, 1 determined to go to Scotland for the next 

 three years. Seeing that my dogs were well calcidated for 

 grouse shooting, as they had been broken and shot to on the 

 moors, and being aware of my anxiety to possess his breed 

 of Russians, he very kindly offered to exchange them for 

 mine, with a promise that I would reserve a pair of Russian 

 puppies for him. . . . Since then I have hunted them in com- 

 pany of several dogs of high character, but nothing that I 

 have yet seen could equal them. If not taken out for six 

 months they are perfectly steady, which is a quality rarely 

 to be met with. ... I contend that for all kinds of shooting: 

 there is nothing equal to the Russian, or half-bred Russiaa 

 setter, in nose, sagacity, and every other necessary qualifica- 

 tion that a dog ought to possess." 



Mr. William Lort, to whom we applied for information 

 concerning the in-eed, writes in reply about the Russian set- 

 ter: 



"Roughly speaking, in appearance this dog is rather like ' 

 a big ' w-arm' Bedlington terrier. There are two varieties of 

 the breed, and cm-iously enough they are distinguished from 

 each other by the difference iu their "color. The dark colored 

 ones are deep liver and are cmdy coated. The light colored, 

 ones are fawn, with sometimes white toes and white on 

 cJiest : sometimes the white extends to a collar on the neck. 

 These latter are straight-coated, not curly like the dark ones; 

 My reccollection of this breed extends back some fifty years, 

 and the last specimen I owned of it — a light-colored one — I 

 gave away to a friend who would not take a hundred pounds 

 for it. 



"Their' noses never seem to be efifected by a change of 

 climate ; hence their value in my eyes. I have worked them 

 in September's sun and in January's snow, aud they were 

 equally good. They were some of the best dogs I ever had, 

 and never varied ; and under exceptional cases as regards thft 

 weather, we always had the Russians out. The only faidt 

 I found with them was the difficulty in getting new bloods 

 tor those we had showed evidences of scientific breeding, and 

 a strict adlierance to type. The fact that they were success- 

 ftdly crossed, to my knowledge, with English setters, satisfies 

 me that they are really setters and not au allied breed. 1 

 may add that they are excellent water-dogs." 



VVhen a breed is so highly recommended by such sports- 

 men us the above, it seems marvellous that it has not been, 

 encouraged in a country like oiu- own, which has been the 

 nursery of sport for years. We cannot, therefore, express 

 too strongly our conviction that the introduction of a dip of 

 Russian blood woidd improve the working csipacitiea of our 

 i^! i i: ' I ;rs. .\t all events, the experimeiU is well worth 

 I- I lO WG trust that Mr. Lort, or some other gentle- 

 i ... .;. looked up to in the canine world, will set the 

 t-Aa.Lii I ile, iMil try to Still further improve our breed of settfifs. 

 Unquestionably, the appoaiance of our dogs would sufier at 

 first, but few sportsmen would regret the loss of good looks 

 if an increase of working capacity was gained. 



A scale of points is quite out oi the question in treating of 

 a breed of which so very little is known, and for a descrip- 

 tion of the Rus.sian Setter we must take refuge under thu 

 jDgis of Mr. William Lort, 



Imported Bull Bitch.— The steamer dtp of SiekmoM 

 which has just arrived in this port, had on board a verv ex' 

 cellent bull bitch, consigned to Mr. E. B. Goldsmith, the 

 well-kno\vn forwarding agent, of 58 Wall street, tliis city. 

 The bitch was imported by Mr. R. 31. Livingston, of Rve~ 

 Beach, N. H., and selected by Dr. Gordon Stables for him 

 Of the bitcli Dr. Stables writes as follows: "I consider the 

 bitch a veiy nice one. Her only fault is that she carries het- 

 ears rather kigfi, m that a sire nmst be selected that has smid): 

 ears. She Las a .splendid skull, good stop and nice mouth."- 

 The bitch ai-rived safely and is now on her way cq her owner„ 



A DoG, A Chttech Faib asd a '^KfTL^—Trento-n, N, J. 

 Dec. i.—l send you the result ol a contest for my Newfound- 

 land dog Duke, held at a church fair in this citj'. The con- 

 tesit was between two prominent fire companies, and evcite- 

 I ment ran very high up to last evening, when it was decided. 



