Spaniels were well known,
and habitually used as aids to the chase both in France and England,
as early as the middle of the fourteenth century.

In the eighteenth and early part of the nineteenth century the Spaniel
was described by many writers on sporting subjects; but there is a
great similarity in most of these accounts, each author apparently
having been content to repeat in almost identical language what had
been said upon the subject by his predecessors, without importing
any originality or opinions of his own. Many of these works,
notwithstanding this defect, are very interesting to the student of
Spaniel lore, and the perusal of Blaine's _Rural Sports_, Taplin's
_Sporting Dictionary and Rural Repository_, Scott's _Sportsman's
Repository_, and Needham's _Complete Sportsman_, can be recommended
to all who wish to study the history of the development of the various
modern breeds. The works of the French writers, De Cominck, De
Cherville, Blaze, and Megnin, are well worth reading, while of late
years the subject has been treated very fully by such British writers
as the late J. H. Walsh ("Stonehenge"), Mr. Vero Shaw, Mr. Rawdon
Lee, Colonel Claude Cane, and Mr. C. A. Phillips.

Nearly all of the early writers, both French and English, are agreed
that the breed came originally from Spain, and we may assume that
such early authorities as Gaston Phoebus, Edward Plantagenet, and
Dr. Caius had good reasons for telling us that these dogs were called
Spaniels because they came from Spain.

The following distinct breeds or varieties are recognised by the
Kennel Club: (1) Irish Water Spaniels; (2) Water Spaniels other than
Irish; (3) Clumber Spaniels; (4) Sussex Spaniels; (5) Field Spaniels;
(6) English Springers; (7) Welsh Springers; (8) Cocker Spaniels. Each
of these varieties differs considerably from the others, and each
has its own special advocates and admirers, as well as its own
particular sphere of work for which it is best fitted, though almost
any Spaniel can be made into a general utility dog, which is, perhaps,
one of the main reasons for the popularity of the breed.

II. THE IRISH WATER SPANIEL.--There is only one breed of dog known
in these days by the name of Irish Water Spaniel, but if we are to
trust the writers of no longer ago than half a century there were
at one time two, if not three, breeds of Water Spaniels peculiar to
the Emerald Isle. These were the Tweed Water Spaniel, the Northern
Water Sp