280 CHASING AND RACING 



harmony and back one another faultlessly), and a good 

 retriever or spaniel that will drop to shot and wing, 

 and never leave a runner until it is safe in his tender 

 mouth ! 



It may be very satisfactory to your stationary 

 shooter to swank, in the evening, how he had two 

 dead rocketters in the air at 'once, and doubled up a 

 third with his second gun, and how he had at least 

 fifty birds on the ground at once at that hot corner ! 

 The satisfaction may even be more acute, if he has 

 seen his next-door neighbour, that crack shot, Lord 

 Slammenem, blow the tail out of one cock and drop 

 a leg of another. 



But give me a boon companion, a staunch pointer, a 

 brace of cockers, and a flat-coated retriever of my own 

 particular breed, and set me on a great expanse of 

 marsh where snipe abound, and duck are frequently 

 met with ; where, on the sides of the heather-clad hills 

 which surround it, grouse can be walked up, and many 

 a woodcock flushed. Give me these conditions, I 

 repeat, and you can have all the pheasant battues and 

 grouse and partridge drives, and all the boasting of your 

 prowess with the shooting iron, that your heart may 

 desire ! 



Of falconry I know little, but it must be a very 

 pretty sport, and one which requires a great knowledge 

 of nature and skill in training and retaining your 

 birds. 



