WARWICK WOODLANDS. 105 



told you, you are much surer of finding marked birds after an 

 hour's lapse, than on the moment." 



" I will do you the justice to say," Forester replied, " that 

 you always make a tolerably good fight in support of your 

 opinions ; and so you have done now, but I want to hear some- 

 thing more about this matter of holding scent facts ! facts ! 

 and let me judge for myself." 



" Well, Frank, give me a bit more of that pie in the mean 

 time, and I will tell you the strongest case in point I ever wit- 

 nessed. I was shooting near Stamford, in Connecticut, three 



years ago, with C K , and another friend ; we had 



three as good dogs out, as ever had a trigger drawn over them. 

 My little imported yellow and white setter, Chase, after which 

 this old rascal is called which Mike Sandford considered the 

 best-nosed dog he had ever broken a capital young pointer 

 dog of K 's, which has since turned out, as I hear, superla- 

 tive, and P 's old and stanch setter Count. It was the mid- 

 dle of a fine autumn day, and the scenting was very uncom- 

 monly good. One of our beaters flushed a bevy of quail very 

 wide of us, and they came over our heads down a steep hill- 

 side, and all lighted in a small circular hollow, without a bit of 

 underbrush or even grass, full of tali thrifty oak trees, of per- 

 haps twenty-five years' growth. They were not much out of 

 gun-shot, and we all three distinctly saw them light ; and I ob- 

 served them flap and fold their wings as they settled. We 

 walked straight to the spot, and beat it five or six times over, 

 not one of our dogs ever drawing, and not one bird rising. We 

 could not make it out ; my friends thought they had treed, and 

 laughed at me when I expressed my belief that they were still 

 before us, under our very noses. The ground was covered only 

 by a deep bed of sere decaying oak leaves. Well, we went on, 

 and beat all round the neighborhood within a quarter of a mile, 

 and did not find a bird, when lo ! at the end of perhaps half 

 an hour, we heard them calling followed the cry back to that 

 very hollow ; the instant we entered it, all the three dogs made 

 game, drawing upon three several birds, roaded them up, and 

 pointed steady, and we had half an hour's good sport, and we 

 were all convinced that the birds had been there all the time. I 

 have seen many instances of the same kind, and more particu- 

 larly with wing-tipped birds, but none I think so tangible as 

 this I" 



5* 



