The next best performers of the period, but with a great gap between, were Mr. Lloyd Price’s Belle, bred by Lord Henry Bentinck, but without pedigree given, and Mr. Sam Price’s Bang. The author is not certain whether the general opinion is that Mr. Sam Price went to the foxhound, and that Bang owed his substance and character to the cross, but he was certainly different in type from those other Devonshire pointers, Sancho and Chang, that won on the show bench about the same period, and were entirely pointer-like.
Without in any way insisting upon the origins of the different types and colours above described, there is no doubt that some difference of ancestry at a remote or recent period has been responsible for the characteristics. Consequently, for practical purposes and for breeding, the specimens most marked with the characteristics peculiar to each kind may be treated as distinct strains of blood, although it may not be known what that blood is. To make the author’s position more clear, he would say that if a lemon-and-white and a whole-black pointer came in the same litter they would probably be related in blood, as they certainly would be on paper; but the blood relationship might be very slight indeed, for one would be, as it is now expressed, a “brother” of some remote black ancestor, and the other a “brother” of some remote lemon-and-white ancestor. But this is not wholly true; because in breeding together brothers and sisters both of one colour, other colours will very occasionally come in the offspring. The influence of sire and dam is shown to be much less than was previously thought possible, but it is not shown to be absent, in spite of the cell and germ theory.
It is obvious that, in starting to keep pointers, a prospective breeder must settle on one or other of the three existing types, and it is necessary for such a beginner to know that he may cross them one with the other with great constitutional advantage, without much fear of blending type or blood, provided he selects for type and character by means of colour. For instance, he may cross a black pointer with a lemon-and-white or liver-and-white, and repeat this in every generation, and yet the puppies that come black will be of one type, and those that come lemon-and-white will be of the other. The cases of blending will be very rare indeed, and can easily be discarded.
The late Joseph Lang, the gun-maker, had a breed of lemon-and-white pointers, from which those of the late Mr. Whitehouse were descended, and that gentleman’s Priam and Mr. W. Arkwright’s Shamrock, with a space of thirty-five years between them, might have been litter brothers for appearance and work. The latter is the best lemon-and-white pointer seen out in quite recent years, and the former was probably the best of his period. Sir Watkin Williams Wynn has a strain of lemon-and-white pointers in which black-and-white and liver-and-white often come, and in this kennel there is a nearer approach to a blend of type in the three colours than has been remarked by the author elsewhere.
Mr. A. E. Butter, of Faskally, had a very fine kennel of liver-and-white pointers, mostly derived from a strain kept up in Shropshire and the neighbourhood. These dogs had all the best strains of liver-and-white blood in their pedigrees, and they were as successful at field trials as, and much resembled, Mr. Sam Price’s Bang and Mike. Faskally Bragg and Syke of Bromfield were most striking workers, entirely of the liver-and-white type; but good as they were in the field, it was difficult to see how Bragg became a show Champion, with a very heavy shoulder, great throat like a hound, and the same suggestion behind. But he became a capital stud dog, and in Melksham Bragg probably became the sire of his own superior in work as well as in appearance. But a better than either was Syke of Bromfield. The best of this type is now in the kennel of Colonel C. J. Cotes of Pitchford, whose Pitchford Ranger and Pitchford Duke are in every way admirable specimens of this type of pointer. The latter’s dam, Pitchford Druce, approaches the dish-faced, fine-sterned type, and very few better have won at field trials in recent years. Colonel Cotes tells the author that this bitch traces back to his father’s old breed, kept for a century at Woodcote, where there were constant interchanges of blood with Sir Thomas Boughey’s sort, only recently dispersed. Mr. Elias Bishop has been very successful with his family of pointers called the Pedros, and these again are of the liver-and-white type, but with a tendency to the dish-faces of the lemon-and-white dogs, and not as coarse in the sterns as some of the more pronounced liver-and-white type.
AN EARLY NINETEENTH CENTURY PICTURE OF THE WOODCOTE POINTERS, THE PROPERTY OF COL. C. J. COTES. HIS FIELD TRIAL WINNERS PITCHFORD DRUCE AND PITCHFORD DUKE ARE DESCENDED FROM HIS FATHER’S WOODCOTE POINTERS
COL. C. J. COTE’S CHAMPION FIELD TRIAL PITCHFORD RANGER ON LORD HOME’S LANARK MOORS
