212 MANUAL FOB YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



tant part of his duty, however, is to find and bring the 

 game that has dropped. To teach him to find is easy 

 enough, for a young water-spaniel will as readily take to 

 the water, as a pointer puppy will stop ; but to bring his 

 game without tearing it, is a more difficult lesson, and the 

 most difficult of all is to make him suspend the pursuit of 

 the wounded game while the sportsman reloads." 



He must, in a few words, be taught invariably to beat 

 his ground, crossing and recrossing it in endless intersect- 

 ing semicircles, never beyond twenty paces distant from 

 his master, and to hunt mute. The latter being far easier 

 than with the cocker, springer, or even the Clumber dog, 

 since the water-spaniel does not give tongue so fiercely or 

 so instinctively as his land congener. 



Secondly, he must drop to shot, at the report of the 

 gun, and lie steadily at charge, until he be ordered to go 

 on, when he will recover wounded birds with inconceivable 

 cleverness, following them foot by foot through tussocky 

 bogs, thick flag tufts, and the most closely tangled marsh 

 grasses, or diving after them in deep waters, till they 

 shall give out in their own element, from mere weariness. 



For wild fowl shooting in large inland lakes he is in- 

 valuable, merely as a retriever, particularly where there 

 is much reed, wild rice or marsh grass, among which crip- 

 ples will skulk so cunningly as to defy the most accurate 

 marker; but their great forte is where teal, mallard, 

 wood-duck, pintails, and the other fresh- water varieties fre- 

 quent large flat grassy meadows, intersected by small la- 

 goons, creeks or rivulets in which they feed ; or still more, 

 where a slow winding stream, bordered with willows and 



