RUSSIAN SETTER. 105 



gentleman, well known as an excellent judge, speak of a brace of 

 extraordinary young dogs lie Lad seen in the neighbourliood of 

 his Yorkshire moors, with his recommendation I purchased them. 

 I shot to them in August last, and their beauty and style of per- 

 formance were spoken of in terms of praise by a correspondent to 

 a sporting paper. In September I took them into Somersetshire, 

 fully anticipating that I should give the Russians the go by : but I 

 was again disappointed ; I found, from the wide ranging of my 

 dogs, and the noise consequent upon their going so fast through 

 stubbles and turnips (particularly in the middle of the da}% when 

 the sun was powerful and there was but little scent), that they 

 constantly put up their birds out of distance, or, if they did get a 

 point, that the game would rarely lie till we could get to it. The 

 Russians, on the contrarj^ being much closer rangers, quartering 

 their ground steadily — heads and tails up — and possessing perfec- 

 tion of nose, in extreme heat, wet, or cold, enabled us to bag double 

 the head of game that mine did. Nor did they lose one solitary 

 wounded bird ; whereas, with my own dogs, I lost six brace the 

 first two days of partridge-shooting, most of them in standing corn. 

 " My old friend and patron, having met with a severe accident 

 while hunting last se^xson, determined to go to Scotland for the 

 next three years. Seeing that my dogs were well calculated for 

 grouse-shooting, as they had been broken and shot to on the moors, 

 and being aware of my anxiety to possess the breed of his Rus- 

 sians, he very kindly offered to exchange them for mine, with a 

 promise that I would reserve a brace of Russian puppies for him. 

 Although I had refused fifty guineas for my brace^ I most gladly 



