The same writer says that the English spaniels (setters) were of two colours, “black-and-tan” and “red-and-white,” so that there is another possible origin of the whole-coloured red dogs. Black-and-tan setters often produced a red dog, but not the Irish dark rich red. This red puppy in the litter might have arisen from an Irish cross, but, on the other hand, it might have been a blend with the lemon-and-white coloured English setters, or the result of puppies following the markings of one ancestor and the colour of another. Those that the author bred from black-and-tan parents had no dark hairs to suggest their origin, but neither had they the rich chestnut of the Irish setter. The writer’s experience of breeding dogs inclines him to the belief that the spaniel-like tendency of the breed, now that it is selected for all-red colour, is proof not only of its spaniel but probably of a springer origin. Their excitement, their merry low-carried sterns, and their noses on the ground, speak like an open book to one who has bred and watched the breeding of all races of setters for forty years, and has assured himself that selection for colour is the automatic selection of character usually found with that colour.

The late Mr. Laverack was of opinion that crossing his black-and-whites with the lemon-and-whites of the same litter was in fact equivalent to cross breeding. However, he lived to introduce red dogs in his breed, so that the former kind of crossing does not do everything. There is no doubt that size and fertility suffer by this method, but however often the incestuous breeding is repeated such a thing as a blend of the two colours was almost unknown—that is to say, when a liver-and-white one did, very rarely, make its appearance, Mr. Laverack himself traced it to a former cross with the Edmund Castle breed of liver-and-white setters. There was always a difference other than colour between the lemon-and-white and the black-and-white brothers and sisters—a difference which suggested two distinct sources of origin of not at all related breeds. Consequently, if the red-and-white has not been entirely eliminated from the Irish setter, and if they sometimes do revert, the author would expect the reversions to be more setter-like and less spaniel-like than the present show Irish setters, and to be more like Dr. Stone’s Dash and the Kate and Palmerston already mentioned.

Since writing the above, the author remembers that on one occasion he bred from an Irish dog and a black-and-tan bitch, with the result that the puppies were liver-coloured. Yet when two black-and-tans were bred together thirty-five years ago, there were usually a couple of red puppies in the litter showing neither liver, black, or black tinge, or even dark-red colours. This does not support the theory of a black-and-tan origin of the whole colour.

The collie-like sense of the Irish setter has been referred to, and a case of the kind may be of interest. In 1873 the author was shooting along the shores of a loch in Inverness-shire, hunting a brace of setters, one of which was a red Irish puppy. A grouse was killed that fell out into the lake, there about a mile wide and several miles long. The dogs dropped to shot, and there lay while the party waited to make sure that the wind would not bring in the grouse, for we had no retriever or any setter that had ever retrieved. It became evident at the end of a few minutes that the grouse was slowly drifting away, and the order was given to continue the beat, leaving the bird to its fate. But the young red setter was no sooner on its legs than it darted straight to the lake, jumped in, swam to the grouse, brought it to land and there dropped it, shook itself, and started to hunt for more live birds.

That was the first and also the last bird it ever retrieved, although it was constantly encouraged to make further attempts. Of course this looks like reason, but that is questionable. At any rate, it was startlingly smart, and about as unexpected a canine performance as could be conceived.

Another of the breed was so smart in finding wounded game that he ended as a retriever in Yorkshire grouse driving, and was said to be better than several retrievers, although he never lifted a bird, but merely put a foot on the grouse and waited to be relieved, when he would go quickly and straight to the next wounded bird, and so on until all were found.

It is probable that even wild grouse do not often fly from a dog unless they associate him with the presence of man. When using a parti-coloured team of black-white-and-tan setters with some lemon-and-white dogs, the author has noticed that wild grouse soon got to expect the man when they saw the dogs, and he has found that by using a red dog then, the birds behave differently, probably mistaking the Irish setter for a Scotch fox. At any rate, when they ought to have been very wild according to locality and season, grouse have been noticed to treat a red dog with a certain amount of resentment and walk away from him, flicking their tails as they move, plainly expecting the rush, and unwilling to fly before it came. What they obviously did not expect was that there was a man with a gun.

THE BLACK-AND-TAN SETTER

A sporting parson of the middle of the eighteenth century tells us that the English setters were then of two colours, red-and-white and black-and-tan. Whether the author meant to say black-white-and-tan seems a little doubtful, but in any case there were black-white-and-tan setters long before this, as is evidenced in one of Dürer’s pictures, and this Flemish artist died in 1528. When this picture was exhibited at the Grosvenor Gallery in 1891, it escaped the notice of the author in spite of several visits, but Mr. Rawdon Lee describes the dog illustrated as a black-white-and-tan setter, less spaniel-like and more on the leg than the modern show setter. Then, half a century later, our earliest writer on the dog mentions the setter, or index, as a distinct dog from the spaniel, and at the same time throws doubt upon the Spanish origin of the latter. It was in 1570 that Dr. Caius of Cambridge wrote upon the dog; unfortunately he appears to have known nothing except the duties of the setter, for he does not describe either its origin, its colour, or appearance.

It has been said that the Duke of Gordon got the black-and-tan colour by crossing with the collie, but the majority of the Gordon Castle dogs were black-white-and-tan, and some were red-and-white. That is to say, they may have been and probably were the colours that the eighteenth-century writer meant when he described those of the “English spaniel”—that is, the English setter.