27G TACT AGA1^ST FICTION. 



trace tlio strickou bird even to the end of the 

 world, if he goes there. Dogs, accustomed in this 

 ^vay to use their own discretion as well as their 

 nose, l)ecoine perfectly trustworthy in covers full 

 of game. 



At Cranford, when His Royal Highness the late 

 Duke of York was shooting there, my old famous 

 favourite. Smoker, so often mentioned, saw a 

 pheasant fall ; and having been sent to fetch that 

 pheasant by me, after going a certain distance, 

 stopped short of the fall, and came back to my heels. 

 The fact was, the pheasant had fallen among a 

 lot of unflushed birds, and Smoker would not put 

 them up. 



The same mental and veasonahle discrimination 

 was, in after years, manifested by Smoker's grand- 

 son ^' Wolf," while I resided at Teftbnt Manor- 

 House, in Wiltshire. There were circular beds of 

 shrubs and flowers on the lawn, and into them I 

 had boon in tlie ]ia1)it of sending Wolf to drive 

 out rabbits. This he had continued to do for the 

 earlier j^art of spring and summer. One day, later 

 in the summer, I sent Iiim into a large bed of shrubs 

 to do tlie usual thing : lie went into tlic slnnibs a 

 little way, made a peculiar sort of distasteful snap 



