York's “The Master of Game,’’ written about 1410; but this is an 
almost literal translation of “Livre de Chasse,” written about 1385 
bv Gaston de Foix. This French count, famous as a warrior and 
a sportsman, was a capital authority on all hunts and hunting. 
His horses, his hounds, and his hawks were not only more numer¬ 
ous, but also of higher quality and better training than those of 
any feudal lord or monarch in all Europe. His vast domains 
bordered on Spain, and his kennels housed many a spaniel, cher¬ 
ished as valuable aids in the royal sport of falconry. This noble 
sportsman, in his great work on the chase, devotes considerable 
space to spaniels 
and their training. 
He says that they 
“are called span- 
iells because their 
kind came from 
Spain, notwith¬ 
standing that there 
are many in other 
countries,” and he 
tells us they should 
have “a great head, 
a great body, and 
be of fair hue, 
white or mottled, 
for they be the 
fairest, and of such 
hue they common¬ 
ly be the best,”nor should they be “too rough, but their tails should 
be rough.” “They love well their master, and follow him without 
losing, although they be in a crowd of men, and commonly they go 
before their master, running and wagging their tail.” 
This description, written over five hundred years ago, is to-day 
quite appropriate in all that Gaston de Foix said of the spaniel’s 
character and disposition. There have been changes in the race’s 
physical appearance; nevertheless it is obvious that in coats and 
colors, at least, there has been little transformation, especially 
since the past ten years has seen a revival of interest in the parti- 
colors, “white or mottled, for they be the fairest.” 
However, there has come a great change in the spaniel's voca¬ 
tion. Gaston de Foix wrote: “Unless I had a goshawk or fal¬ 
con or hawks for the river or sparrow hawks, or the net, I would 
never have any (spaniels).” To find partridge or quail for the 
hawks and to locate coveys to be secured wholesale in a net were 
the tasks to which the early dogs were put. Gradually there 
came to be a division of labor among the spaniels. The larger 
ones that had been used to set birds for tbe net, the original 
“setting dogges,” continued to follow their profession as hunters 
of partridge and quail. Others were developed into “water 
dogges,” used to locate and retrieve duck and other water fowl. 
Still others were found useful in woodcock and pheasant shoot¬ 
ing. This was, of course, after the introduction of firearms 
and their perfection to a point that made wing shooting possible. 
A selection upon the part of their breeders, based upon these 
rough classes of activity in the field, has resulted in the develop¬ 
ment of all the different well-marked varieties of the sporting 
spaniels, while others, carried into the parlor, have been bred 
down to that extreme diminutiveness that is the boast of the 
toys. The setters at one end of the scale and the tiny toys at 
the other, with all the intermediate varieties, have alike sprung 
from a chunky, heavily boned, rather lumbersome dog of some 
thirty-five or forty pounds weight. 
The cocker has come from the medium-sized stock, bred down 
to less than half the size of his ancestors who went afield with 
Gaston de Foix’s falcons. He received his name either from 
the woodcock or the pheasant. In old days it was the custom — 
and a mighty sensible and sportsmanlike custom it was—to shoot 
only cock pheasants, and whoso was hasty or careless enough to 
kill a hen must pay a forfeit of a golden guinea to the keepers. 
Accordingly, when the old sporting writers refer to the ancestors 
of the cockers as “cocking spaniells, used for cock shooting," one 
cannot .always be sure whether they are writing of woodcock or 
cock pheasants, nor from which bird the dog’s name was derived. 
But, what’s in a name?—though it is interesting to see just why 
the cocker was so christened, especially since many people do not 
know, and often make quaint guesses, a favorite being founded on 
some fanciful connection with the cock¬ 
ing of a gun, at which signal the dog is 
supposed to have been trained to rush in 
and flush the birds. 
Nine people out of ten have at least a 
bowing acquaintance with cocker span¬ 
iels, and I am sure that most of that for¬ 
tunate nine will think that all this about 
cocker’s sporting ancestors is a far trip 
afield. We Americans have come to re¬ 
gard him solely as a house dog, and to 
forget that he was famous as a sporting 
dog even before Columbus crossed the 
ocean. I very well remember the storm 
of protest loosed over my head by a lover 
of the breed seven or eight years agO' 
when T wrote about the cocker as a sport¬ 
ing dog, under the title of “The Neg¬ 
lected Spaniel." Because be could prove by statistics that the en¬ 
tries of cocker spaniels at the bench shows were always large, he 
objected strenuously to my adjective “neglected.” Nevertheless,, 
as a sporting dog they were, and are, neglected. More’s the pit}'.. 
English and American shooting conditions are very different, but 
that is poor excuse for our 
having reduced the size of 
the cocker till, even in Eng¬ 
land, he would be almost 
useless. If the country over 
His back should be short, his chest deep, his quarters strong and muscular. Eighteen 
to twenty-four pounds is his weight—“a big lap-ful 
Always sure of himself and his position is the spaniel; he recognizes all social dis¬ 
tinctions, his manners are perfect, and he is kind and true 
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