For reasons that it is difficult to fully explain, English setters have been subjected to more fluctuations in merit than any other breed. The last decadence undoubtedly set in when the show and field trial sorts first became distinct breeds. The show dogs lost the assurance of constitution which work in the field guarantees, and the field trial dogs lost the breeder’s care for external form, which as show dogs their ancestors had received. Moreover, they had no equivalent in England in the form of stamina tests at field trials, and the principal breeders have so many dogs that stamina is of little importance in practice to them, however necessary it is to the maintenance of the vitality of a race of thoroughbreds.

There is evidence of black-white-and-tan setters in a Flemish picture of A. DÜrer, but in England the earliest clear evidence makes the English setter of 1726, or thereabouts, either red-and-white or black-and-tan. From the breeding together of these two colours may now be produced whole-coloured red and whole-coloured black, black-and-white, and black-white-and-tan dogs, and possibly also their various mixtures, such as “ticked” dogs of either colour, but this is doubtful. There have been several strains of liver-and-white setters, quite pure bred as far as anyone knew, but bearing traces of water spaniel character, so that it is probable they were originated by this cross at some remote period. Probably it is possible to originate liver-and-white by crossing black-and-white on lemon-and-white; but if that is so, this is an original mixture of colouring that is exceedingly unusual, provided there is no reversion to a liver-and-white ancestor. It is unusual for this blend to occur, because a race of setters has been bred for many years in which more than 99 per cent. of the offspring came one of three colours—namely, black-and-white ticked, lemon-and-white ticked, and black-white-and-tan with very few ticks and large patches of colour. The other two colours that have shown themselves, each less than 1 per cent., have been red and white in large patches—a combination of the markings of one, and the colour of another, ancestral race—and liver-and-white. But it is possible that these two rare kinds are not blends at all, but only reversions to ancestors more than thirty-five years and ten or twelve generations back. Paper pedigrees can trace the colours and the absence of red markings back much farther than this, but the author is only now discussing what he personally remembers. Probably these are not reversions at all, but merely blends of colour and markings. It would possibly be more nearly correct to say that the liver-and-white appears in the race referred to no more often than once in a thousand puppies. If it is a reversion, it shows how very nearly a cross may be bred out; and if it is a blend, it proves that whatever generation of these black-and-white and lemon-and-white setters are crossed together the offspring continues to come of the three original strains of blood, with little mixture, and very seldom a thorough mixture.

All the best English setters in the world are descended from Mr. Hackett’s Rake, a descendant of Mr. Burdett’s black-and-tan Brougham. Rake begat Mr. Staffer’s Rhoebe, and also Judy, the dam of the Champion Field Trial dog Ranger. These two, Rhoebe and Ranger, founded two distinct families, which for a very long time were not mixed, and in America are still separate, and the former remains uncrossed with American blood. The Ranger blood was principally kept up by Mr. James Bishop of Wellington, Salop, and by Mr. Elias Bishop also.

The Rhoebe blood came into note when this celebrated brood bitch was crossed with Duke, a dog bred from a Netherby dog, and a Staffordshire bred bitch, belonging to the late Sir Vincent Corbet. Amongst many good offspring, Rhoebe had one peculiar dog called Dan. He stood over 27 inches at the shoulder, and had more bone than any foxhound. This setter won the Champion Stake at the National Field Trials in 1871. His chief merits were that he was very fast without distressing himself, and his tremendous strength and stride enabled him to go round fast small ones without appearing to be trying, and meantime to flick his stern as only those going within their powers can. Setter breeding was revolutionised when this dog was bred to the best bitches of Mr. Laverack’s sort.

Mr. Laverack’s dogs in the sixties were known mostly upon the show bench; but what was then less well recognised was that no dogs had done harder work upon the moors for many canine generations. They were said to be in-bred to only two animals on all sides of this pedigree, and to go back seventy years without any cross whatever. It is probable that Mr. Laverack had forgotten what crosses he did make; but in any case he crossed with the black-white-and-tan Gordons of Lord Lovat’s kennel, and whether he kept the offspring or not, there was generally a trace of tan about the cheeks of his black-and-white ticked dogs. In any case, his dogs were very much in-bred, until some of them suddenly came liver-and-white in one litter, and red, and black, whole-coloured in another. None of the latter were allowed to mix with the Rhoebe and Duke strain of setters, and indeed these were only crossed with the blood named above, and with that of John Armstrong’s Dash II., a son of a Laverack setter dog, and descended from a bitch said to be a sister of that Duke mentioned above. From this limited material in point of numbers, but of three distinct strains of blood, the finest setters of modern times were produced, including many that won principal honours of the show and also of the field trials. In England they took most of the field trials for setters for some years, and in America they took all stakes that were open to both pointers and setters for even longer. To apportion the merit amongst the original three strains would be difficult, but as the setter breeding of the future depends on a proper understanding of that of the past, some few remarks may be of use. First, it has to be admitted that the Rhoebe blood was as successful when crossed with the Laverack race as when braced up by the cross with Duke. Also that Duke’s descendants from other crosses than that of Rhoebe were better than any others, except her own so crossed descendants. Duke and the Laveracks never were directly crossed together, and there is nothing to be had from the pedigree of Kate, the grand-dam of Armstrong’s Dash II., because it has been variously given at different times. On the book, then, the merit was due to Rhoebe and Duke in equal proportions, but the book is wrong. The reason for this being said is that the brothers and sisters of Dan, by Duke from Rhoebe, were a poor lot. They were great big 26 inch dogs and 24 inch bitches, and one of them, namely Dick, in appearance with Dan made the most remarkable brace that ever won the stake at the National Trials, and apparently there was not a pin to choose between them, except that Dan was the faster. They hunted out what is now the Waterworks field at Acton Reynold in a style of ranging, pointing, and backing that could not be improved on even in imagination, and the way they had of going down on their elbows, and standing up behind, with their great flags on a line with their backs, and consequently pointing upwards at an angle of 45 degrees, was a revelation in style, just as the pace was, for it was so easily done that they had lots of time to flick their sterns as they went. When they were taken up without a mistake, no others, even without a mistake too, could have been in the running. But Dick was a flat-catcher, wanting in stamina, courage, and in nose, for he was a bad false pointer. Dan was the only one of the litter, as far as they were known to the author, that was a perfectly honest dog, and exhibited no more at a field trial than in private. It is therefore not possible to discredit the Laverack bitches that, when crossed with Dan, again and again produced litters in which there was scarcely any difference between the best and the worst, and in which, when the best died, the worst were good enough to find themselves running against Ranger for the National Championship. But this is not all the evidence in favour of the Laveracks, for, when heavy dogs of that strain were crossed with the very moderate sisters of Dan, the produce was far better than either the sires or dams. It was only when the three sorts were blended that anything like uniformity, or a distinct breed, appeared, and the offspring were far more true to type, and merit in work, when the tail-male line was to Duke and the tail-female a Laverack, than when the order was reversed. The Stud Book shows the field trial winnings of the sort, and it will always be remembered that once, when the Field Trial Derby was a very big stake, four setter puppies of this breed, belonging to Mr. Llewellin, took the four first places in it that could fall to setters. In other words, they put out all the other setters and then defeated the best pointer. At other times they won the brace stake one day, and one of the brace the single stake the next. Then Count Wind’em and Novel on one occasion took the two championships at Birmingham Show for good looks, and beat the best pointers and setters at the National Trials as well. Count Wind’em was about 25 inches at the shoulder, long and low, and neither hot “muggy” weather in August, nor hillsides of the steepest on which grouse lie, could tire him. One field trial judge of the day who saw the way he did the heather against such dogs as Dash II., and other winners of the time, compared the sight to that of a great racing cutter sailing round a 20–rater. It was all done without an effort, and therein lay the conserved energy that kept on as long as any man could follow.

In America this breed was first called the “Field Trial breed,” then “Llewellin setters,” and also “The straight-bred sort,” by which it is generally known in conversation. At the time of writing (June 1906) the last pure bred one of the race that has run at an English field trial was Mr. Llewellin’s Dan Wind’em, bred in the last century. But in America nothing has ever been able to suppress the pure bred ones at the field trials there. When they have not won, their 90 per cent. of pure blood descendants have done so. In 1904 the author was on a visit to America, and, having been requested to help judge their Champion Stake, did so, with the result that one of these pure breds defeated all comers. This dog was called “Mohawk,” and in the same kennel was another setter named “Tony Man.” The latter had a slight trace of outside blood, but the two were almost identical to look at. Tony Man had just previously beaten Mohawk, and won the stake of the United States Field Trial Club in first-rate style. But the trace of outside blood was so very much regarded by the American sportsmen that the author heard Tony Man offered for sale at £200, whereas he was assured on independent evidence again and again that Mohawk could easily earn £500 a year at the stud. This great difference is caused not at all by any great difference in the prospective merits of the descendants of the two dogs, but merely by the fact that those of one can be registered as “straight-bred,” and those of the other cannot. The book of reference is The American Field’s Stud Book, where those with any cross whatever are registered as English setters, and the others as “Llewellin setters.” These straight-bred ones trace on all sides to seven dogs bred in the sixties of last century—namely, Mr. Laverack’s Dash II., his Fred, and his Moll III., Mr. Blinkhorn’s Lill I., Mr. Thomas Statter’s Rhoebe, Sir F. Graham’s Duke, and Sir Vincent Corbet’s Slut.

That a breed should have lasted without cross for so long, and now be as full of vitality as ever it was, can only be accounted for by the intensely searching selection of the fittest for work, in a manner that tries constitution as well. In America they have from thirty-five to forty field trials each year; the best and severest is the Champion Stake, and wisely the winners of this event are bred from to the exclusion of most others. To have won the stake is to have proved ability to hunt at an extreme tension for three hours without slackening up. That is to finish much faster than the average of fast dogs start when fresh in the morning. The only falling off that the author could discover, compared with the great dogs in England of the seventies and eighties, was the want of size of the best dogs there. Mohawk measured by the author under 21 inches at the shoulder. There are many large dogs of the blood out there, but they are not those of the most vitality, although they fairly compare in that respect with the best dogs in England. Besides the selection already referred to, what helps to keep up this in-bred race as workers, whereas it died out in England, is the number that are bred in the States and Canada. There are many thousands there; probably in England there are not more than two or three besides importations from America and their descendants. It should be stated, to make this clear, that the setters run of late by Mr. Llewellin at field trials have been cross-breds, and would not be registered in The American Field Stud Book as “Llewellin setters.” The following are referred to as cross-breds: Border Brenda, Count Gleam, Kitty Wind’em, Border Beauty, Orange Bloom, Pixie of the Fells, Countess Brenda, Countess Carrie, Miss Mabel, Countess Nellie, Puck of the Fells, and Countess Shield. That is to say, all the dogs run by Mr. Llewellin at field trials in the years 1903, 1904, and 1905.

Others who have the blood in this crossed form are Colonel C. J. Cotes of Pitchford and Captain H. Heywood Lonsdale of Shavington, near Market Drayton. The latter has some American-bred straight-breds, but reference is here made to their old and well-known field trial strains. Each of these kennels obtained a large draft of the pure bred sort in the early eighties, or late seventies, and introduced it widely into their own breeds. These were formerly founded on Lord Waterpark’s breed, and his were crossed very much with Armstrong’s Duke already referred to, so that the crossing of the two strains had the double benefit of out-crossing generally, and yet in-breeding to one particular dog, and that one as valuable in a pedigree as Duke. Some years ago, for an article in Country Life, the author tabulated the pedigree of Captain Lonsdale’s Ightfield Gaby, and found that he had eight distinct crosses of Duke, and as he was then by far the best setter in England, it was only history repeating itself in the matter of the most successful blood.

Thus the American straight-bred, as has been shown, was obtained by crossing three unrelated breeds of setters together. Unrelated setters cannot now be found without going to the black-and-tans and the Irish. But such crosses are not required as long as America has a strain of straight-bred ones uncrossed with anything on this side the water for a quarter of a century. Indeed, the value of the American cross has already been proved by Mr. Alexander Hall’s Guiniard Shot and Dash. They are bred from a bitch imported from America, but not a “straight-bred” one. These two and Captain Lonsdale’s Ightfield Duffer were the best setters seen in 1905, and in their absence another Ightfield bred one on one side of her pedigree, namely, Mr. Herbert Mitchell’s Lingfield Beryl, has carried all the spring field trials of the 1906 season by storm, and has beaten the pointers equally with the setters in single and in brace stakes too. She is a long way the best setter Mr. Herbert Mitchell has ever had. Like Ightfield Gaby, already mentioned as the best of his period, the only fault with her is that, with the same beauty of form and strength to carry her light setter-like body, she would have been better if larger.

Of course this is intended to be hypercritical, but it is necessary to point out that Gaby is 22 inches at the shoulder, and Count Wind’em, his best ancestor, was nearer 25 than 24 inches. This is too much to lose in twenty years, for it really means losing nearly half the size of the dog.

It is pleasing to note that the American cross with the old blood, even with small dogs on both sides, seems to recover the lost size. This is a great point; because, although a good little one is enormously better than a lumbering big one, yet a good big one is out of all proportion better than the same form on a small scale.

A few years ago, Mr. B. J. Warwick was winning all before him in the field with setters of very small size. The blood of most of them was a blend of all the sorts named above except the American strain. That is, they were descended from Ranger on one side and from the late Mr. Heywood Lonsdale’s sort on the other. They were beautifully broken, had for the most part capital noses and plenty of sense, but few of them are likely to breed dogs better than themselves, because they mostly lacked external form and size. Many of them were bred by Mr. Elias Bishop, who ran a better sort in the Puppy Stakes in the spring of 1906,—Ightfield Mac,—more fitted, in his then form, for American than for English field trials. The demand there is for a dog; here it is a little too much for a breaker. It is a question whether allowance enough is made at field trials for the indiscretions of youth. The consequence of judging puppies as if they were old dogs is that, when they become so, they are not a very high-couraged lot, and the winning puppies seldom become mature cracks.

There is plenty of evidence that the encouragement of docility instead of determination in puppies has done more to run down English setters than even in-breeding itself. The doer of the most brilliant work will go out if he makes one mistake. In practice there is always a duffer that does not make one.

That is the worst thing that can be said against field trials, and it has only been true of late years. The old style of judging was to select the most brilliant worker for highest honours, and under it English setters made rapid strides.

This handicapping of great capacity goes farther than merely turning a dog out for a trivial fault. The judges often seem to demand a dog with small capacity—that is, compared with the old demand. Here is a comparative instance. In 1870, when Drake the pointer won the Champion Stake, he and a competitor were turned off in a field through which there ran a line of hurdles cutting the field in two. Drake disregarded the hurdles and beat the field as if there had been none, and did the whole field in the same time that his competitor took to do the half—that is, only one side the hurdles. He did not scramble it, but methodically quartered every inch. Precisely the same kind of field occurred at the National Trials in 1906; but when Pitchford Duke got through the hurdles, his handler, knowing the feeling of judges generally, ran after him, whistling and shouting, to get him back to do the 150 yards wide strip that the hurdles divided from the bulk of the field. It is true that Pitchford Duke did not make as if he was going to quarter the whole field in Drake’s style, but had it been Drake himself the breaker would probably have done just as he did for Duke, and scolded him for what was held to show brains and capacity in 1870 by some of the best sportsmen in the country who were acting as judges, and at a time when everybody knew what dogs should do, because everybody used them.

However, it is dangerous to say a word by way of criticism of an institution to which we owe it that setters and pointers have been preserved at all. We should have had no dog with a will to imitate Drake had it not existed. The only object of saying anything is to appeal for a little more value for “class,” and a little less for trick performers. It is very difficult to give effect to a wish of this sort in judging, because faults are facts, and facts are stubborn things; whereas class is generally, but not always, a matter of opinion, on which judges may hold conflicting views. The author was once hunting a brace of setters at the National Trials, and they had done such remarkable work that the late Sir Vincent Corbet, who was judging, was heard to tell someone “that black-headed dog has been finding birds in the next parish.” Much of this work had been done under the slope of a hill, where the spectators could not see it; they had formed a semicircle at the other end of the last field that the brace had to do, and the black-headed dog came up the field, treating as a fence the line of spectators who had formed up 100 yards or so within the field. He hunted up to their toes before turning along the line, and dropped to a point within 10 yards of several hundred people, who had been standing there so long that they were obviously and audibly quite sure there was nothing at the point. When the author came up, he could not move the pointing dog; the latter evidently thought he was too near already, and he had a brace of partridges, much to everybody’s surprise. This dog, Sable Bondhu by name, was the very highest “class,” and to show how right the judge’s estimate of him was, it may be recorded that he was the performer of a very remarkable piece of work on grouse.

It was late in the season, and we had been hunting all the morning and finding comparatively few grouse on a beat generally full of birds. At last Sable got a point from the top of a “knowie,” and with his head so high that it gave the impression that the birds must be a very long way off. In starting to go to him, the author happened to see the grouse in a large pack standing with their necks up on another “knowie,” about 400 yards away from the pointing dog. That explained the absence of grouse: they had packed upon a moor where they were supposed never to do so. More with the object of scattering them than expecting to get near enough for a shot, we formed single file, and two guns and a gillie, without going near Sable, started to circle the grouse and get ahead of them, so as to put them between the guns and the dog. Strangely enough, they gradually sank down and hid, and we did get quite close to them, and at the risk of being branded poacher, truth compels the confession that we picked up five brace for our four barrels, and besides, scattered the birds in every direction. Sable never moved until he was wanted to assist in finding the dead birds. Those who do not know what very bad eyes dogs have, might think he had seen the birds, but this was not so. The volume of scent made it recognisable at such a distance, and enabled not a speculative, but a certain, point. The author has many times seen such points obtained at 200 yards at a single brood of grouse, and at more than 100 yards at a pair of partridges. Nothing like this can ever be done by a dog that has not “class”; but field trials often have been won by dogs of no class. That cannot be helped, but it must always be regretted. The no class sort referred to are meetly called “meat dogs” in America, because sportsmen there think there is no object in using them except the requirements of the “pot.”

Since the above was written, it has become known that, when in America in 1904, the author selected a couple of unbroken puppies of eight and ten months old, of the straight-bred sort, for Captain H. Heywood Lonsdale, and that, in spite of quarantine for six months, which damaged them exceedingly, Scott, a capital breaker, has succeeded in perfecting one of them. This dog is known as Ightfield Rob Roy, and with much in hand he beat all the best pointers and setters in the country at the Gun-dog League’s Field Trials in July last, upon the grouse moors of Lord Home.

The author was very pleased with the great “class” shown by Rob Roy, not because the English dogs were beaten, but mostly because he has for some years been pointing out that America was assuredly ahead of us, because of our attempt to breed docility instead of to break it. The writer, in fact, got almost ashamed of comparing the dogs of the present to their disadvantage with the dogs of the past, and felt quite sure it would have been much more popular to have ignored old memories and been satisfied with the best of English field trial work. He was quite aware that this laudation of the days and dogs that are gone was held to be more or less what it so often is. But now that Captain Lonsdale’s fine setter has demonstrated that a single selection of the author’s in America, with every chance against him, has been able to establish the accuracy of his memory, he believes that crossing will result in bringing back all the old “class” vitality and energy, especially if we were, like the Americans, to establish real stamina trials, and, like them, evolve truer formation. Evolution of form is still in progress, just as it was when our ancestors first differentiated the setter from the spaniel by selection of the best workers.

The author is not concerned to make his experiences fit in with recent Mendelian or anti-Mendelian science. You can’t make a silk purse out of a sow’s ear, nor will the crossings of plants, guinea-pigs, and mice conform to experiences with higher animals. If they would, Darwin’s pigeons would have taught the stud master. They did not. That there is this difference one statement of two first generation facts is enough to prove. It is that if pure-bred white fowls are crossed with another race, equally pure-bred, and black, the offspring will all be black chicks and white chicks, with no mixtures. On the other hand, “in spite of all temptations to belong to other nations,” no American pure negro has ever been able to call her offspring a white child.