THE POINTER 
I T is with regret I write the words, but it is perfectly true, that the 
pointer is among the breeds of old English sporting dogs — more 
particularly those used in the shooting field — which are making 
little, or no, progress in popularity. There are certainly not nearly 
so many pointers in the country as there were fifteen or even ten 
years since, and were it not for the allegiance of Mr W. Arkwright 
and Lieut-Colonel G. J. Cotes to a breed which has been in their families 
for generations, it is very certain that field trials for pointers would soon 
become extinct. There are other shooting men who breed pointers for 
breaking, of course — Captain Stirling, Mr Isaac Sharpe, Mr B. J. Warwick, 
Mr A. T. Williams, and Mr Herbert Mitchell among the number — ^while 
of the old school of professional breakers and handlers who still have 
a liking for pointers, T. Knowlton, W. L. Nicholson and T. Lauder are 
the only survivors. The Pointer Club has long since ceased to exist. It 
never had much influence, and did practically nothing to encourage 
the breeding of pointers of the working type, though by its support of 
the leading shows men were found to fill the classes, alas! far too 
often with “ pointers which cannot point,” as Mr Arkwright has very 
tersely put it on more than one occasion. The returns at Aldridge’s sales 
in London just before the opening of the shooting season have proved, 
over and over again, that it is the setter rather than the pointer which 
men are anxious to buy for work on the grouse moors. It is difficult to 
assign a reason for this, especially as the pointer is recognized as being 
possessed of more stamina than the long -coated setter and better equipped 
by Nature for that arduous work on the moors, or in the lowlands later 
in the season, than any breed of setter. The fashion seems to have changed 
in favour of the latter, who has beauty in form as well as in action to recom- 
mend him, though we must admit to being stirred on more than one 
occasion when seeing a well -matched brace of the Sutton Scarsdale 
pointers at work. 
As a description of a trial in which pointers were the actors, the verbal 
picture in Lee’s ‘‘ Modern Dogs ” is a classic. No apology is needed for 
its reproduction. A lover of pointers can almost see the trial, so vivid and 
yet so plainly written is the account of a heat at Blandford in 1882 between 
Romp’s Baby and Mr Arkwright’s Revel. ‘‘ The two dogs were ordered 
down on a ploughed field, recently rolled, and looking as fiat as a billiard 
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