THE AMEKICAN SNIPE. 101 



out a dog, or with a slow dog, as you will ; any man who 

 can pull a trigger must fill his bag. 



If there be a hundred birds scattered, wild, over five 

 hundred acres of ground, where are you with your slow 

 dog, or your no dog ? Just no where. "While you are 

 painfully picking up your three or four birds with your 

 slow pointer, your true sportsman, and slashing walker, 

 with his racing up-head and down-stern setters, will have 

 found fifty, and bagged twenty-five or thirty. 



There are ten days in a season when birds are wild 

 and sparse, for one when they are congregated and lie 

 hard ; and the argument comes to this, that when birds 

 can be killed with ease, even without a dog at all, a slow 

 pointer is the best ; when they are difficult to find, and 

 hard to kill, even by a crack shot, the slow pointer is no 

 where, and of no use, while the racing setters will fill 

 the bag to a certainty. 



For my own part, I can say to a certainty, that I have 

 had more sport, and killed more birds, by many, many 

 times, when birds have been widely scattered, and diffi- 

 cult to find, and when I have walked half or a quarter of 

 a mile between every shot fired, than I ever have when 

 birds have lain close, and jumped up at every pace under 

 my feet; and for a simple reason, that the places in 

 which birds so rise and lie, are rare and of small extent, 

 and the 'days on which they do so few and far apart. 



Therefore I B&J, friend for all true sportsmen I hold 

 friends choose well thy day, when the air is soft and 



