THE POINTING GRIFFON 
A DOG OF MANY ACCOMPLISHMENTS, RAPIDLY GROW¬ 
ING IN POPULARITY WITH AMERICAN SPORTSMEN 
S INCE the earliest days of bird-dogs— 
the age of the falcon, the crossbow 
and the nets—discussion over the 
merits of different dogs as aids to the 
taking of game birds has been keen and 
endless. 
Our ancestors were no more exempt 
from this weakness than we are, and al¬ 
though they did not have the English dogs 
of to-day they did have a very varied as¬ 
sortment of dogs, smooth, wavy and rough- 
coated, as a nucleus for argument. And 
these furnished wonderful stories of cy- 
negetique achievements, which their owners 
retailed to one another over a cold bottle 
just as we are prone to do to-day. 
If one has a taste for reading musty vol¬ 
umes on the chase, digging into archives 
or among forgotten letters, such a search 
will be rewarded by many interesting items 
of information which prove the truth of 
the saying of Solomon, that “there is noth¬ 
ing new under the sun.” 
The sportsmen of the sixteenth century 
debated the different merits of their dogs 
and were as positive that theirs was the 
only breed on earth as is the average 
pointer, setter or griffon man of to-day. 
It must be admitted, however, that as to 
duration, the griffon man puts it over his 
two rivals by a couple of centuries at least 
—and may yet have the last word. For 
that Phenix of dogdom, the griffon, is 
again to the front and though very new 
to America has gained many firm cham¬ 
pions in this, his latest country of adoption. 
I T is my intention neither to enter into a 
discussion of the comparative merits of 
the pointer, setter and griffon, nor to 
break a lance in the defense of one or the 
other; simply to give a short history of 
the griffon—a description of the dog and 
the qualities he possesses. 
The pointing griffon is distinguished 
By PERCIVAL L. ROSSEAU 
from the griffon hound from which he un¬ 
doubtedly sprang. They are two shoots of 
the same tree that separated when shot¬ 
guns and shot were invented—about the 
end of the sixteenth century. 
He is first mentioned by Henry the 
Fourth of France in 1596 and by Charles 
d’Arcussia in his book in 1598. 
Charles was a knocker and apparently 
pinned his faith to spaniels, for he writes 
that neither griffon nor brack (the pointer 
of his day) was much good for partridge. 
Nearly a century later, de Selincourt 
classifies the hunting dogs of his day, dis¬ 
tinguishing pointing dogs (gun-dogs) as 
chiens d’arquebuse and hounds as chiens 
courants, and cites three distinct breeds of 
gun-dog, griffon, spaniel and brack (this 
last is a short-haired dog, very similar to 
the pointer) and states that the best grif¬ 
fons came from Italy. 
Old paintings and drawings of the seven¬ 
teenth and eighteenth centuries represent 
the griffon practically as he is to-day, with 
the exception of a breed known as the 
griffon of Picardy, long-haired, now prac¬ 
tically extinct. 
T HROUGH the period running from 
1683 to 1847 the griffon had his ups 
and downs and at this later date was 
being bred generally all over the continent. 
M. le Marquis de Cherville did much for 
the race, but beyond doubt two of their 
greatest friends were Edouard Karel Kor- 
thals, born at Amsterdam in 1850 and Mr. 
E. Boutant, of Francfort. 
Korthals began breeding the Griffon Kor- 
thal and founded the family of that name 
from seven patriarchs, gathered up wher¬ 
ever he could find dogs conforming to his 
desires. 
Boutant began the breeding of pointing 
griffons about 1865. He found in Hesse, 
dogs called the “dirty-beard Hessian,” from 
which his family of griffons was founded. 
Apropos of the Hessian dogs, it is possible 
they were of French origin or at least had 
some French blood, for some of the French 
griffons were brought into Hesse by King 
Jerome of Westphalia. Another, a Ger¬ 
man writer and a great breeder of stichel- 
haar, tells us that.the Prince Herman of 
Waldeck imported French griffons into his 
principality of Arolsen. 
I N 1878 at the bench-show at Francfort, 
Mr. Boutant exhibited his in rivalry 
with Korthals’ in the same classes. But 
a year later, at the exhibition at Hanover 
(1879) Mr. Boutant’s dogs were entered 
in open classes for stichelhaarige vorsteh- 
hund (pointing stichelhaar) while Kor¬ 
thals’ were inscribed in the classes of wire- 
haired pointing griffons (griffons d’arret 
a pail dur). This separation under dif¬ 
ferent names of two families of the same 
race dated from that exhibition, and lasted 
for twenty-five years, a period of bitter 
rivalry between the breeders of the two 
families. 
Korthals was convinced that the griffon 
was a Continental race, of which the dif¬ 
ferent groups, though separated, were yet 
cousins. Whereas the stichelhaar men be¬ 
lieved that they possessed a pure blood 
German dog unrelated to either the spir- 
cone (Italian) or the griffon (French). 
In 1882 delegates from the German clubs 
met at Hanover and established the points 
and standard for the stichelhaar, thus defi¬ 
nitely baptising Mr. Bowtant’s wire-haired 
dogs. A deputation of these delegates came 
to Korthals, asking him to join them and 
to call his dogs “'Stichelhaar.” He refused, 
giving as his reason that the two groups 
were of the same origin and that the sepa¬ 
ration they were trying to introduce was an 
artificial one. 
It was only on the 12th of February, 
1907, that the act of peace was signed by 
V 
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