204 KRIDER'S SPORTING ANECDOTES. 



next to impossible to drive snipe, found in par- 

 ticular situations, from their feed, before their 

 numbers are pretty well thinned. In the happy 

 observance of these rules by the shooter and his 

 dogs, consists, in our opinion, the perfection of 

 the art, that the one should know how to follow 

 up his game, and the other to be either as slow as 

 a tortoise or as fleet as the wind, just as the occa- 

 sion may demand. In more than one instance 

 has the sportsman arrived on the ground, and 

 found it dried up, especially in a vast range of 

 flat meadow land ; when by sending out a fleet 

 dog he has, perhaps, seen him on a stand, or 

 marked water fly from his feet at a great dis- 

 tance; and upon coming up, lo! here is a wet 

 spot, with a cover of dead reeds, perhaps the only 

 one to be found for miles around and here he 

 has often killed from thirty to forty birds. And 

 how often, on the other hand, has the sportsman, 

 who from culpable carelessnes, or a mistaken 

 spirit of economy, is content to go out with a 

 heedless, half-broken dog, had his temper tried 

 and his day's shooting spoilt, by seeing the birds 

 driven off before he has obtained a half a dozen 

 shots. 



A pottering pointer or a setter that habitually 

 rakes, or carries his nose low, no matter how 



