228 PRAIRIE AND FOREST. 



easily taught to retrieve, and are, in my belief, more 

 intelligent. A gentleman who has frequently shot with 

 me across the Atlantic, uses with great success a pair 

 of cocking spaniels, which answer admirably and make 

 an extremely lively and pretty team, but they are 

 rather too quick for a veteran ; ten years ago, I 

 should have enjoyed nothing better than such com- 

 panions. One thing I would recommend, that for 

 woodcock shooting your dogs have plenty of white in 

 their colour, for unless such is the case, you will fre- 

 quently lose a point and shot by walking past them, an 

 annoyance to yourself and a disappointment to your 

 setter. 



Before concluding, I would call the attention of 

 all good and true lovers of the dog and gun to a 

 practice that exists in Louisiana, and doubtless else 

 where, of killing woodcock with poles at night in 

 the corn fields, with the assistance of a brilliant torch. 

 Like the noble salmon, the woodcock becomes fasci- 

 nated or stupefied by the brilliancy of the glare, and 

 falls a ready victim to the club of the midnight 

 prowler. America is now coming to that age that it 

 is absolutely necessary to insist on the laws being en- 

 forced for the protection of game and fish. If not, 

 half a century hence, the haunts which now abound 

 with game will be as thoroughly divested of it as the 

 Hudson or Connecticut river is of the princely salmon. 

 Once extermination takes place, it will be too late to 

 do aught but repine. 



Snipe abounds throughout the prairies of Western 

 America far outdoing all other game in their abund- 

 ance. The Wilson snipe, for such is its proper name, 



