With the exception of an ill-drawn hind leg and near fore foot this is
the correct formation. The model had the shoulders, head, back and
back ribs, rarely seen now except in hard-working dogs.
]
[Illustration:
MR. HERBERT MITCHELL’S LINGFIELD BERYL, WINNER OF FIRSTS SIX TIMES IN
SEVEN FIELD TRIAL OUTINGS IN THE SPRING OF 1906
]
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.
[Illustration:
CAPT. H. HEYWOOD LONSDALE’S FIELD TRIAL IGHTFIELD DOT AND IGHTFIELD
ROB ROY, WITH SCOT THEIR BREAKER
]
[Illustration:
IGHTFIELD ROB ROY (STANDING) AND IGHTFIELD MAC, BELONGING TO CAPT. H.
HEYWOOD LONSDALE
The former was victor on Lord Home’s moors near Lanark, in July 1906,
over all English-bred pointers and setters. The latter was winner of
the puppy stakes at the same time.
]
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.