THE ENGLISH SETTER. 35 



yet intelligent manner. He takes Ms course from one 

 likely place to another, makes a circuit about likely fields 

 to strike the trail of anything which may be feeding, 

 avoids bare, unpromising ground in his casts, and always 

 takes advantage of the wind in beating about, in thicket or 

 open. The dog which beats about without any plan in his 

 work, hunting promising and unpromising ground alike, 

 never becomes a skillful finder. The dog having "bird 

 sense ' ' always has a good memory, and if hunted on any 

 grounds once or twice, will remember the location of every 

 bevy found, and hunt them out afterward with remarkable 

 quickness. Therein lies the great superiority, in this 

 country, of intelligent ranging over the artificial method of 

 beating out the ground, called quartering, in which the 

 dog is required to beat out the ground at right-angles to 

 the course of his handler; thus going constantly in parallel 

 lines excepting when turning at the ends, the distance 

 between the parallels being theoretically the range of the 

 dog's nose. Thus a dog with keen, sensitive functions of 

 smell could take wider parallels than one whose nose was 

 dull or poor. In this country, no attention is paid to the 

 teaching of quartering by the expert handler; and indeed 

 it is not required. If a dog in hunting out large tracts of 

 country can not do so intelligently, he is imperfect as a 

 hunter, and no artificial methods of ranging can supply 

 the natural deficiency. In England, quartering is useful, 

 for the reason that the grounds and manner of cultivation 

 favor it; but what in this respect is advantageous there, is 

 not so here. 



The education of a dog should begin when about ten 

 months or a year old. It should not be inferred that noth- 

 ing whatever should be done before such age; on the con- 

 trary, a great deal is taught, but it is done by taking the 

 puppy out for exercise runs, and by associating him with 

 his master, thus enabling him to learn a great deal from his 

 own observational powers. Hence a puppy should never be 

 kept chained in a kennel if it is possible to avoid it. At 

 ten months or a year old, the puppy has outgrown many of 



