170 LETTERS TO YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



III. 



DOGS, GOOD AND BAD. 



MY last letter dealt mainly with driving. Safety comes first, 

 and dangerous sins, destructive to your career (and, inci- 

 dentally, to that of others) are possible — a pessimist would 

 write probable — in proportion to the size of the party engaged. 

 Also, it is a fact, and a regrettable one, that you may get 

 through many seasons, perhaps all your seasons, without an 

 opportunity of taking part in the pursuit of grouse or part- 

 ridges over dogs, ending your days unbaptised, as it were, 

 in the font of true guncraft, uninitiated in the rites con- 

 sidered indispensable by our forefathers ; rites whose obser- 

 vance made them better sportsmen in the true sense of the 

 word than we are. They had more time at their disposal, 

 I admit. This is all to their credit, in so far as it indicates 

 that they were less keen on money-grubbing and content 

 to spread their sport over a whole season rather than anxious 

 to condense the killing of large quantities of game into a 

 few days devoted to parties, reckoning methods equally 

 as important as results. But, as this is a letter of advice, 

 not a retrospective review, we will leave the past alone. 



I feel certain that if you are luck}' enough to see " dog- 

 ging " carried out in its best form, you will enjoy every kind 

 of shooting all the more, because many little secrets which 

 you would otherwise leave unprobed or unnoticed will be 

 explained and endowed with their proper interest. Had 

 you lived in the da}/s when a boy born in a sporting family 

 used to find his chief delights, even at the un breeched age, 

 in the kennel, looking forward with scant patience to the 

 time when he would be promoted to walk behind the guns 

 for an hour or two, and thus begin the process — almost 

 automatic — of imbibing the rudimentary principles of scientific 



