the dog
that had got it pointing, and the other barking or awaiting
developments. There was nothing more beautiful than the work of a
well-bred and well-broken brace of Pointers, or more perfect than
the way a man got his shots from them. There was nothing slow about
them, but on the contrary they went a great pace, seemed to shoot
into the very currents of air for scent, and yet there was no
impatience about them such as might have been expected from the
Foxhound cross. The truth of it was that the capacity to concentrate
the whole attention on the object found was so intense as to have
lessened every other propensity. The rush of the Foxhound had been
absorbed by the additional force of the Pointer character. There has
been nothing at all like it in canine culture, and it came out so
wonderfully after men had been shooting in the above manner for about
forty years.

It was nearing the end of this period that field trials began to
occupy the attention of breeders and sportsmen, and although Setters
had been getting into equal repute for the beauty of their work, there
was something more brilliant about the Pointers at first. Brockton's
Bounce was a magnificent dog, a winner on the show bench, and of the
first Field Trial in England. Newton's Ranger was another of the early
performers, and he was very staunch and brilliant, but it was in the
next five years that the most extraordinary Pointer merit was seen,
as quite incomparable was Sir Richard Garth's Drake, who was just
five generations from the Spanish Pointer. Drake was rather a tall,
gaunt dog, but with immense depth of girth, long shoulders, long
haunches, and a benevolent, quiet countenance. There was nothing very
attractive about him when walking about at Stafford prior to his
trial, but the moment he was down he seemed to paralyse his opponent,
as he went half as fast again. It was calculated that he went fifty
miles an hour, and at this tremendous pace he would stop as if
petrified, and the momentum would cover him with earth and dust. He
did not seem capable of making a mistake, and his birds were always
at about the same distance from him, to show thereby his extraordinary
nose and confidence. Nothing in his day could beat him in a field.
He got some good stock, but they were not generally show form, the
bitches by him being mostly light and small, and his sons a bit high
on the leg. None of them had his pace, but some were capital
performers, such as Si