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IX.  THE COCKER SPANIEL.—­For the last few years the popularity of this smaller sized branch of the Spaniel tribe has been steadily increasing, and the Cocker classes at most of the best shows are now remarkable both for the number of entries and the very high standard of excellence to which they attain.

A short time ago black Cockers were decidedly more fashionable than their parti-coloured relatives, but now the reverse is the case, and the various roans and tricolours have overtaken and passed the others, both in general quality and in the public esteem.  The reason for this popularity of the breed as a whole is not far to seek.  The affectionate and merry disposition of the Cocker and his small size compared with that of the other breeds pre-eminently fit him for a companion in the house as well as in the field, and he ranks among his admirers quite as many of the fairer sex as he does men—­a fact which is not without a certain element of danger, since it should never be lost sight of that the breed is a sporting one, which should on no account be allowed to degenerate into a race of mere house companions or toys.

Small-sized Spaniels, usually called Cockers, from their being more especially used in woodcock shooting, have been indigenous to Wales and Devonshire for many years, and it is most likely from one or both of these sources that the modern type has been evolved.  It is probable too that the type in favour to-day, of a short coupled, rather “cobby” dog, fairly high on the leg, is more like that of these old-fashioned Cockers than that which obtained a decade or two ago, when they were scarcely recognised as a separate breed, and the Spaniel classes were usually divided into “Field Spaniels over 25 lb.” and “Field Spaniels under 25 lb.”  In those days a large proportion of the prizes fell to miniature Field Spaniels.  The breed was not given official recognition on the Kennel Club’s register till 1893, nor a section to itself in the Stud Book; and up to that date the only real qualification a dog required to be enabled to compete as a Cocker was that he should be under the weight of 25 lb., a limit arbitrarily and somewhat irrationally fixed, since in the case of an animal just on the border-line he might very well have been a Cocker before and a Field Spaniel after breakfast.

It is not easy to find authentic pedigrees going back further than a quarter of a century, but Mr. C. A. Phillips can trace his own strain back to 1860, and Mr. James Farrow was exhibiting successfully thirty-five years ago.  The former gentleman published the pedigree of his bitch Rivington Dora for eighteen generations in extenso in The Sporting Spaniel; while the famous Obo strain of the latter may be said to have exercised more influence than any other on the black variety both in this country and in the United States.