,
Setters, and Spaniels of our forefathers were carefully broken not
only to find and stand their game, but also to fetch the fallen birds.
This use of the setting and pointing dog is still common on the
Continent and in the United States, and there is no inaccuracy in
a French artist depicting a Pointer with a partridge in its mouth,
or showing a Setter retrieving waterfowl.

The Springer and the old curly-coated water-dog were regarded as
particularly adroit in the double work of finding and retrieving.
Pointers and Setters who had been thus broken were found to
deteriorate in steadiness in the field, and it gradually came to be
realised that even the Spaniel's capacity for retrieving was limited.
A larger and quicker dog was wanted to divide the labour, and to be
used solely as a retriever in conjunction with the other gun dogs.
The Poodle was tried for retrieving with some success, and he showed
considerable aptitude in finding and fetching wounded wild duck; but
he, too, was inclined to maul his birds and deliver them dead. Even
the old English Sheepdog was occasionally engaged in the work, and
various crosses with Spaniel or Setter and Collie were attempted in
the endeavour to produce a grade breed having the desired qualities
of a good nose, a soft mouth, and an understanding brain, together
with a coat that would protect its wearer from the ill effects of
frequent immersion in water.

It was when these efforts were most active--namely about the year
1850--that new material was discovered in a black-coated dog recently
introduced into England from Labrador. He was a natural water-dog,
with a constitution impervious to chills, and entirely free from the
liability to ear canker, which had always been a drawback to the use
of the Spaniel as a retriever of waterfowl. Moreover, he was himself
reputed to be a born retriever of game, and remarkably sagacious.
His importers called him a Spaniel--a breed name which at one time
was also applied to his relative the Newfoundland. Probably there
were not many specimens of the race in England, and, although there
is no record explicitly saying so, it is conjectured that these were
crossed with the English Setter, producing what is now familiarly
known as the black, flat-coated Retriever.

One very remarkable attribute of the Retriever is that notwithstanding
the known fact that the parent stock was mongrel, and that in the
early dogs the Setter type largely predominated, t