PARTRIDGE SHOOTING. 183 



indifference to the comforts of their dogs in some 

 men, otherwise keen sportsmen, and a cockney- 

 ish affectation of noli me tangere, equivalent to 

 get out, you inferior brute in others. The first 

 are those, called in the vulgar parlance pot- 

 hunters, who, after Ponto has helped to fill the 

 bag, and shown no sign of flagging while there 

 was light left to shoot over him, unceremoniously 



d n the dog and deny him a passage 



though ten weary miles may intervene. The 

 second are the dandy cockneys ; " the softly 

 sprighted men," who are so terribly afraid of 

 fleas that they would on no account sit in the 

 same vehicle with a dog, and who ask, in a voice 

 like the ring of a cracked glass: "How does 

 your fallow greyhound, sir ?" Of course it never 

 enters the mind of either of these worthy gentle- 

 men, that the dog, whom they neglect and de- 

 spise, is the nobler animal of the two, and that 

 they have in reality, little to offer against his 

 fidelity and devotion, except the form made after 

 the Creator's image. The intellect of the one 

 master is too obtuse, and that of the other too 

 much infused with self-conceit, to dream of such 

 a comparison. Nevertheless, they might well 

 ask themselves, as a child did of a star : "Is it 

 truer 



