October, 1915 
19 
Scout Gladstone, an English setter at two 
months, member of the black, white 
and tan ticked family 
Powhatan, owned by Hobart Ames, who 
paid $1,200 for him to use as a shoot¬ 
ing dog 
who do not own a good shotgun, and 
few indeed who can resist the call of 
the brown October uplands, when the 
quail and grouse are in season and 
the Hunter’s Moon is high. You may 
not have given your setter a moment’s 
training, nor taken any advantage of 
the wonderful brain that lies there 
ready to educate, but Nature has sup¬ 
plied him with the instincts that cause 
him to crouch and point in rigid cata¬ 
leptic pose at the scent of game, giving 
you the warning to get ready to shoot. 
Even a week in the field with other 
dogs will do wonders for a setter of 
good antecedents. His long habit of im¬ 
plicit obedience to your slightest com¬ 
mand (for the setter is the most docile 
of breeds) will suffice to make him 
hold steady on point with perhaps a 
licking or two at first for flushing 
birds. And though he may not retrieve for you with that 
finished skill which the trained setter displays, he will at least 
mark dead birds with his nose so that you can pick them up 
yourself. So much for the man who does not care to spend 
any time in developing his setter’s peculiar talents, but merely 
wants him for a family dog with capabilities for an occasional 
day afield. 
There are two principal divisions of English setters in our 
country, the black, white and tan ticked, and the orange and 
white. Both have any number of champions and noted field 
dogs enrolled in their ranks, so much so that the old theory 
of coloration affecting a dog’s performance seems completely 
exploded. The markings of a standard black, white and tan 
ticked setter would be black ears and 
head with white forehead and parting 
line, white body and tail sparsely 
ticked in black, a large black patch 
over rump and extending out some¬ 
what on cheeks, inside of ears, and 
tan in two little spots or “eyebrows” 
over the eyes, the more distinct the 
tan the better. 
Orange or lemon and white will be 
marked much the same except that 
orange is substituted for the black. 
The coats of both kinds are long and 
silky without the slightest suggestion 
of wiriness, sometimes curl’ed over the 
spine; long feathers of silk from fore 
and hind legs and long feathery brush 
under tail. The bench showmen have 
developed another type, white all over, 
with multitudinous black or orange 
ticks distributed on the body and head ; 
a large heavy dog, well feathered out in tail and behind fore 
and hind legs. Far be it from me to criticize the points of 
excellence which judges of this type have set up. Every man 
to his taste; to me such dogs are exceedingly ugly, the head in 
particular being spoiled by the disruptive coloration of the 
multitudinous ticks. The dog looks as if he had just run 
through a blizzard of beans; he is by no means the standard 
setter of this country, and is seldom seen in field trails, about 
all the nose he ever had having been bred out of him. 
Then we have the pure white setter, with a trifle of orange 
in ears and over eyes, hair long and silky and curled like 
Persian lamb ; and, finally, there are the blue and orange “Bel- 
(Continued on page 56) 
Quail ahead! The typical setter’s position 
on point-a rigid, cataleptic pose at the 
scent of game, giving the hunter his cue 
to get ready 
A husky litter of pointer pups. Almost equal in field quality to the setter, but owner of a better nose and a human smartness inherited 
from his hound forebears 
