THE SETTER 
outclassed his favourites and enabled the sportsmen to make a good bag. 
In such difficult circumstances, one would have thought that a Russian 
setter, a dog of extremely rough, not to say shaggy, coat, would have felt 
the heat and been more likely to succumb than the lighter -coated English 
dog. That, however, there must have been some great excellence in the 
breed is beyond doubt. For several years a cup was offered at the 
Birmingham show in the hope that it might draw a class of Russian 
setters. To this, however, there was no response, and so the prize was 
withdrawn. 
It is more than doubtful at the present day whether it would be easy 
to find a specimen of the genuine Russian setter in what was once its 
native land, for the same process has been going on abroad that has been 
in progress at home, viz., the dying out of old breeds, but from a different 
cause. With us it is owing to the increasing practice of “driving,” which 
has resulted in the breaking up of many once famous kennels to gratify the 
modern craze for big bags, combined with the aversion to undergo the 
exertion of working for their game with their dogs, which distinguishes 
the majority of modern shooters. In Russia and the Continent it is owing 
to the fashion of imitating the English in the matter of sport, so that 
English breeds of dogs are imported, and kennels of them formed by 
foreign sportsmen, thus superseding the original breeds of the country 
and leading to their extinction. 
The above-mentioned were the principal of what might be called the 
old family breeds, which, alas! are now more or less merely matters of 
history, and indeed the mention of them at the present day is done simply 
to save the memory of them from oblivion, and to serve the curiosity 
of the antiquarian — pity it is that it should be so. Putting, therefore, the 
records of these old breeds on one side, we now come to a history -making 
epoch in the annals of the English setter, and indeed of all setters, and 
not only so but it may justly be added, in the history of animal breed- 
ing of whatever kind, for the facts then for the first time brought to 
light are of deep interest and importance to all who aspire to study 
eugenics. Bench shows for sporting dogs have been held from 1859. At 
the early shows all kinds of setters competed together, and the chief 
honours went, as a rule, to the black and tan, or so-called “ Gordon.” 
These setters had been bred according to the methods of breeding 
generally accepted in those days. Suddenly into the middle of the coterie 
of breeders a bombshell was flung, so startling as to cause a violent 
229 
