The Setter. 291 



tobacco. His Majesty took his dogs out with him 

 on his favourite hawking expeditions, and they 

 couched to and flushed the game at which the 

 peregrine falcon and the goshawk were flown. One 

 would have expected to find something relating to 

 dogs of the field in the King's " Book of Sports," but 

 the pastimes mentioned therein do not include game 

 shooting, nor was it likely that his Majesty would 

 deem an amusement of this kind fitted for the 

 Sabbath day. 



The early writers on sport, the " Stonehenges" of 

 the seventeenth century, all allude in pretty much 

 the same terms to the setter, and Gervase Markham, 

 in his chief work with the odd title " Hunger's Pre- 

 vention, or the Art of Fowling" (1655) describes 

 what a " Setting dog" should be to be perfect in the 

 eyes of the sportsman of his time. Markham says : 



A setting dogge is a certaine lusty land spannell taught by nature 

 to hunt the partridges before and more than any other chase what- 

 soever, and that with all eagernesse and fiercenesse, running the 

 fields over so lustily and busily as if there were no limit in his 

 desire and furie ; yet so qualified and tempered with art and 

 obedience, that when he is in the greatest and eagerest pursute, 

 and seems to be most wilde and frantike, that even thus one hem or 

 sound of his master's voyce makes him presently stand, gaze 

 about him, and looke in his master's face, taking all directions 

 from it whether to precede, stand still, or retire. Nay, even when 

 he has come to the very place where his prey is, and hath, as it 

 were, his nose over it, so that it seems he may take it up at his own 

 pleasure, yet is his temperance and obedience so made and framed 



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