Until within the last twenty years, many good sportsmen were not satisfied unless their pointers and setters retrieved the game shot to them, and Gen. Hutchinson still maintains that it is a good plan to teach them to do so. Fashion is, however, altogether against this last-mentioned combination, partly because no southern shooter can do without a retriever in walking up birds in turnips; and, as he must have such a dog for part of the year, the more practice that dog has, the better, and consequently, the shooter seldom goes out without one - either on the moors or elsewhere. My own experience is, that with a pointer or setter of very high courage it is almost impossible to keep him steady at " down charge " if he is allowed to retrieve; but, on the other hand, a slack worker will no doubt be encouraged if he is permitted to go to his bird and bring it to his master. Consequently, there are two sides to the argument, as I think; and before attempting to form a reliable opinion, it is well to know the breed of pointers or setters which is to be worked.

I am, however, inclined to believe that no retriever proper possesses as good a nose as the pointer or setter, though there are some dogs of these latter breeds who seem incapable of trying for anything but a body scent - and they, of course, are useless as retrievers. Some years ago I endeavoured to devise a plan of trying retrievers in public, and in my experiments I used an old worn-out pointer, which happened to be the only retrieving dog at hand. Constructing a trap on a tripod, which, on pulling a string, would drop a bird with its wing feathers cut in a field of turnips or other covert, I found the old dog invariably bring it to hand, although on one occasion the bird had reached the next field, fully three hundred yards from the trap; and, as the result of these private experiments, I produced the machine at Vaynol in 1871, in full confidence that it would serve the purpose of the retriever trials. But there the retrievers proper could do nothing with a winged partridge dropped on turnips exactly as I had done in private, and if the bird happened to get away more than fifty yards, the scent was very seldom taken up; and if found at all, the success was owing to perseverance in seeking at random, and to accident, rather than nose.

Mr. B. J. Lloyd Price's Devil, a curly liver-coloured dog, apparently a cross between the Irish water-spaniel and the poodle, bred by Sir P. Nugent, is the only dog I have ever seen perform in public to my satisfaction, showing great perseverance in hunting, with a good nose, but not coming up to the level of the old pointer above alluded to. With this exception, the best private retrieving I have ever seen has been with crosses of the terrier and beagle; for with one of these little dogs I never yet lost either fur or feather, though of course he could not carry a hare across a brook or over a gate. Still, we must take the world as we find it, and the world now demands a retriever proper, black by preference, and either wavy-coated or curly.

In the early shows up to 1864, the classes for retrievers were open to all, and it was not till after the second and third held at Birmingham that any decided opinions began to be expressed. In 1860 the celebrated Wyndham was brought out by Mr. B. Brailsford with success, and he was at once accepted as the type of the wavy-coated strain, being apparently nearly or quite pure Labrador. Next year, at Leeds, Wyndham was second to Mr. Riley's Sam, a curly-coated dog, of good shape, but inferior to that gentleman's Royal, afterwards winner of several prizes in England, and of the gold medal at Paris. In 1861 Mr. Riley again succeeded in taking the first prize with his Cato, of about the same pretensions as Sam; the second prize being awarded to a curly-coated dog exhibited by myself, bred by Mr. Whitbread's keeper at Cardington, with an admitted colley cross, and, though handsome in shape, without any of the points which would now be demanded by the judges of the strain, and notably deficient in that bareness of face at present considered a sine qua non. At Islington in 1862 Mr. Riley's Royal was in high form; but at Birmingham in the same year Wyndham again came out first.

In the following year Mr. Hill bought Wyndham, and showed him with his Jet at Islington, with which latter he took the first prize, Wyndham only getting the third. In 1863 Wyndham came out as champion at Birmingham; and, after these ups and downs of the wavy and curly coats, the committee of the Chelsea Show decided on dividing the retrievers into distinct classes, their example being followed at Birmingham and elsewhere. In this year Wyndham and Jet again changed hands, Mr. Gorse, who had long before been engaged in breeding retrievers, becoming their new master, and succeeding in getting first at Birmingham with Jet in the curly-coated class, but, curiously enough, being only second in the wavy-coated class to another Wyndham, belonging to Mr. Meyrick, of Pembroke, but bred by Capt. Sparling. The two Wyndhams were much of the same type, nearly or quite pure Labrador, and were about equally successful on the show bench. For some years Mr. Gorse carried all before him in the curly-coated classes of the various shows with Jet and his son Jet II.; but in 1872 Mr. Morris, of Rochdale, brought out True, a magnificent specimen of the breed, with which he has since that time swept the board in the champion classes, his grand bitch X L being almost equally successful in her own class.

From the year 1870, when Meyrick's Wyndham only took a third prize at Birmingham, Mr. Gorse, Mr. Shirley, and the various owners of Morley have shared the prizes in the smooth-coated classes, Major Allison's Victor being their chief competitor. This dog shows more of the setter than is approved of by Dr. Bond Moore, who takes the lead as a retriever judge, and who has apparently influenced his coadjutor, whether Mr. Lort or Mr. Shirley, in the case of Victor; but has nevertheless, in conjunction with those gentlemen respectively, at the Alexandra Palace and Birmingham Shows of 1874, and more recently at the Islington Show of 1877, awarded a first prize to Melody, a bitch showing even more of the setter than Victor, according to my judgment. In each case the class was a large one, and that at Birmingham was noted by the judges as "extraordinarily good."With such conflicting flats, it is difficult to arrive at any definite opinion of the strain considered by the cognoscenti to be the proper type of the smooth-coated retriever, and I have therefore selected one of each kind, my own impression being decidedly in favour of the setter cross, as likely to possess the best nose.

Melody is a beautiful bitch, no doubt, but she has no pretensions to superiority in any respect over Victor, and hence the above-mentioned decisions are the more incompatible. Both Paris and Morley are said to be pure Labradors, the former being by Sir Henry Paulett's imported Labrador Lion, out of Bess, an imported Labrador bitch. Paris has Won repeatedly the champion prizes at the Crystal Palace and Dublin shows. Melody's pedigree is unusually long in com-parison with other retrievers, and is as follows:

How she gets her setter blood I am at a loss to know, but her ears, flag, and feather show it in a most unmistakable manner.