short and very wide skulls rising
suddenly at the eyes. The brain is relatively large and the intelligence
high. The muzzle is short, the ears large and pendent, the limbs
relatively short and heavy, and the coat thick and frequently long. It
is supposed, from their name, that they are of Spanish origin. They may
be divided into field spaniels, water spaniels and the smaller breeds
kept as pets. Field spaniels are excellent shooting dogs, and are
readily trained to give notice of the proximity of game. The Clumber,
Sussex, Norfolk and Cocker breeds are the best established. The Clumber
is long, low and heavy. It is silent when hunting, and has long ears
shaped like vine leaves. The ground colour of the coat is white with
yellow spots. The Sussex is a lighter, more noisy animal, with a wavy,
golden coat. The Cockers are smaller spaniels, brown, or brown-and-white
in the Welsh variety, black in the more common modern English form. The
head is short, and the coat silky and wavy. Of the water spaniels the
Irish breeds are best known. They are relatively large dogs, with broad
splay feet, and silky oily coats.

The poodle is probably derived from spaniels, but is of slighter, more
graceful build, and is pre-eminent even among spaniels for intelligence.
The best known pet spaniels are the King Charles and the Blenheim, small
dogs with fine coats, probably descended from Cockers.

Setters owe their name to their having been trained originally to crouch
when marking game, so as to admit of the net with which the quarry was
taken being drawn over their heads. Since the general adoption of
shooting in place of netting or bagging game, setters have been trained
to act as pointers. They are pre-eminently dogs for sporting purposes,
and special strains or breeds adapted to the peculiarities of different
kinds of sporting have been produced. Great Britain is probably the
country where setters were first produced, and as early as the 17th
century spaniels were used in England as setting dogs. It is probable
that pointer blood was introduced in the course of shaping the various
breeds of setter. The English setter should have a silky coat with the
hair waved but not curly; the legs and toes should be hairy, and the
tail should have a bushy fringe of hairs hanging down from the dorsal
border. The colour varies much, ranging according to the strains, from
black-and-white through orange-and-white and liver-and-white to pure
white, whilst