Now, if we think of the very large number of these sportsmen, both gentlemen and farmers, who all had dogs, we cannot help coming to the certain conclusion that Pointers and Setters were far more numerous in those days than in these; and besides this, there can be no doubt whatever that their field qualities were, as a rule, vastly superior. Men in those days did not keep dogs for show or for swagger, neither did they keep them for the purpose of running them once or twice a year against Dick, Tom, and Harry; they were not therefore, forsooth, afraid of spoiling them by shooting to them, as men are now. If they kept a dog, it had to be a good one to shoot to, or else it would very soon itself be shot.

In the South and West of England no strains, in the writer's opinion, were kept distinct; if a man had a bitch good in the field, he would put her to an equally good dog belonging to some friend or neighbour, utterly regardless of make or shape: excellence in the field was the one thing needful. Dozens of names of men who had kennels like this before the days of dog shows could be mentioned. The late Mr. Calmady, a well-known sportsman and M.F.H., of Devon and Cornwall celebrity, had some beautiful lemon-and-whites. Mr. Webber, a Falmouth tradesman and a good old-fashioned sportsman, had a breed that he set great store by, though the specimens thereof were the most uneven that one can imagine in general form and also in working qualities. The writer remembers seeing from one litter that this gentleman bred a tall, long-headed, light, and airy brother, a beautiful goer and very good in the field, and a thick, cobby, bull-headed sister, as heavy as a cart-horse and practically useless.

The sporting county of Salop possessed one of the best and most famous old strains of Setter, that of the well-known baronet Sir Vincent Corbet, the portraits of many of which still adorn the walls of the hall at Acton Reynald. These dogs were lemon-and-white; and one of them, Slut, became by Sir F. Grahame's Duke the dam of another Duke, far famed as the ancestor of the best modern strains of Setter. This strain of Sir V. Corbet's seems also to have been in the possession of a Shrewsbury tradesman named Hall, and was crossed in later days with the Marquis of Anglesea's breed the Beaudesert black-white-and-tan, as well as with the Grahame as aforesaid.

The Border counties of Cumberland and Westmorland and the adjacent parts of Scotland boast themselves as having been the home par excellence of the Setter.

The Duke of Gordon's kennel, well known to fame, consisting for the most part of the colour black-white-and-tan, was no doubt the progenitor of a great part of the fashionable blood of both ancient and modern days, and the Lords Lovat, Seafleld, Cawdor, and Southesk had notable strains. The Marquis of Breadalbane also had a strain known locally as "blue marbles" and "red marbles." No doubt all these breeds were at one .time kept very jealously to themselves; indeed, as late as 1872 Lord Lovat's was preserved intact - at all events, was supposed to be; but a few years later the specimens had become smaller in size and were evidently deteriorating.

Most probably these strains were sooner or later mixed together, and many an offshoot must have come into the possession of local sportsmen. There was one curious peculiarity observed in many of these Scotch dogs - under the ordinary coat there was an underlayer of a sort of soft wool. This most probably originated from their having been kept for generations in exposed kennels in the cold north-country winters.

When paying a visit in the sixties to the kennels of the Rev. T. Pearce ("Idstone") at Morden, in Dorset, the writer recollects seeing there some very handsome Setters, black-white-and-tan, orange-and-white, lemon-and-white; these, it appears, Mr. Pearce was accustomed to buy through agents from Scotland at the close of the grouse season at very low prices, he would then put his "imprimatur" on them, and sell them again at high figures. These dogs were far superior in appearance to most of the Setters of the present day, and were no doubt blends of these old strains. The writer saw some of them on partridges: they had good noses and style, but were not well broken.

Again, there seems to have been a distinct strain of Setter in Wales, though personally the writer has only seen two specimens, and they were short, cobby things like Spaniels, with long, curly ears and wavy coats.

And now we come to a very important epoch in dog history, the period of shows and then of field trials. The first Birmingham show was held in November, 1859. The entries were very few and the animals very imperfect. For the first few years the prize honours were chiefly gained by the Black-and-tans, or so-called Gordon Setters, and then there suddenly appeared on the scene a man called Laverack with some specimens of a kennel that he guaranteed had been bred from two ancestors for forty years, and these carried all before them.

Mr. Laverack and his Setters have had such a startling effect on the Setter world that they are worthy of some considerable comment. The history of Laverack himself is sufficiently interesting.

A native of some Westmorland village, he appears in his youth to have been a shoemaker's apprentice. Early in life, however, he came into possession of a legacy bequeathed to him by some distant relative. On this he appears to have been able to gratify the exceeding love for sport which was doubtless in his blood from some remote ancestor. In those days, which would be about 1825, there was any amount of grouse-shooting to be got for nothing by any one who was not afraid of roughing it, and Laverack appears to have led a nomadic life devoted to Setters and shooting for at least forty years. He was a good sportsman, and undoubtedly a most marvellous judge of dogs, and for that reason a most successful breeder of beauty and of some excellence.