picture of King Charles's
spaniels with the living dog, that "the breed of the present day is
materially altered for the worse:" the muzzle has become shorter, the
forehead more prominent, and the eyes larger: the changes in this case have
probably been due to simple selection. The setter, as this author remarks
in another place, "is evidently the large spaniel improved to his present
peculiar size and beauty, and taught another way of marking his game. If
the form of the dog were not sufficiently satisfactory on this point, we
might have recourse to history:" he then refers to a document dated 1685
bearing on this subject, and adds that the pure Irish setter shows no signs
of a cross with the pointer, which some authors suspect has been the case
with the English setter. Another writer[85] remarks {42} that, if the
mastiff and English bulldog had formerly been as distinct as they are at
the present time (_i.e._ 1828), so accurate an observer as the poet Gay
(who was the author of 'Rural Sports' in 1711) would have spoken in his
Fable of the _Bull and the Bulldog_, and not of the _Bull and the Mastiff_.
There can be no doubt that the fancy bulldogs of the present day, now that
they are not used for bull-baiting, have become greatly reduced in size,
without any express intention on the part of the breeder. Our pointers are
certainly descended from a Spanish breed, as even their names, Don, Ponto,
Carlos, &c., would show: it is said that they were not known in England
before the Revolution in 1688;[86] but the breed since its introduction has
been much modified, for Mr. Borrow, who is a sportsman and knows Spain
intimately well, informs me that he has not seen in that country any breed
"corresponding in figure with the English pointer; but there are genuine
pointers near Xeres which have been imported by English gentlemen." A
nearly parallel case is offered by the Newfoundland dog, which was
certainly brought into England from that country, but which has since been
so much modified that, as several writers have observed, it does not now
closely resemble any existing native dog in Newfoundland.[87]

These several cases of slow and gradual changes in our English dogs possess
some interest; for though the changes have generally, but not invariably,
been caused by one or two crosses with a distinct breed, yet we may feel
sure, from the well-known extreme variability of crossed breeds, that
rigorous and long-continued selection