QUIET PARTRIDGE-SHOOTING 



our ancestors as a fair and honourable way of taking 

 birds — was of course the survival of a period when 

 guns were so cumbersome and so heavy that it was 

 impossible to shoot birds flying with them. Shooting 

 flying was not, in fact, much practised in England 

 before the period of Charles II. The illustration, 

 taken from an old drawing of 1799, by Samuel Howitt, 

 shows excellently well the method of netting partridges. 

 A well-broken setter was employed to find the game, 

 when, the partridges located, two men advanced very 

 quietly with a net and secured the covey. It is probable 

 that in those days, the birds, from not being much fired 

 at, lay much more closely than they do at present. It 

 is certainly curious to find this sport obtaining so lately 

 as the close of the eighteenth century, and even 

 included in a book of plates of British Field Sports 

 published by Howitt at the beginning of the nineteenth 

 century. In the Gentleman's Recreation, published in 

 1677, are given very minute directions "How to take 

 Partridges with a Setting-dog." *' There is no art of 

 taking partridges so excellent and pleasant," says the 

 author, Nicholas Cox, ''as by the helping of a Setting- 

 dog." . . . "You are to understand then, that a Set- 

 ting-dog is a certain lusty Land-spaniel, taught by 

 nature to hunt the partridge more than any chace what- 

 ever, running the fields over with such alacrity and 

 nimbleness as if there was no limit to his fury and 

 desire ; and yet by art under such excellent command 

 that in the very height of his career, by a hem or 

 sound of his master's voice, he should stand, gaze 

 about him, look in his master's face, and observe his 

 directions." Here, undoubtedly, is the ancestor of our 

 setters of the present day. These old-fashioned "Set- 

 ting-dogs " were broken with extreme care — the curious 

 inquirer will find very full directions in the pages of 



275 



