PARTRIDGE SHOOTING. 203 



very best advantage, the admirable qualities of a 

 crack snipe dog. If both animals had not been 

 under perfect command, and gun-wise in every 

 respect, the birds would have soon collected in a 

 body, and left the place for a long flight, as we 

 knew of no snipe ground, except this twenty- 

 acre field, for miles around. But by keeping a 

 few paces in front, dropping at every shot, and 

 advancing as slowly as a dead march, when they 

 heard the click of the gun-locks, while their mas- 

 ters were careful to keep perfectly silent, the 

 snipe were little alarmed, and we had half of 

 them down before they rose higher in the wind 

 than our heads, seeming, as they darted up with 

 their usual weird cry, and alit a few rods off, to 

 be too busily engaged in feeding to regard us 

 in any other light, than peevish interlopers, who 

 would persist in coming between them and their 

 gnome-like operations on the moist earth. It is 

 well known to sportsmen, especially ( to snipe 

 shooters, that the voice of a man, or the miscon- 

 duct of a half-broken dog, will do more to scare 

 game away from a feeding ground, than the 

 sound of the guns, and that if the shooters move 

 silently and slowly on, regulating their charges 

 in proportion to the extent of the cover, and the 

 proximity with which the birds spring, it is 



