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Some American Sporting Dogs. 



that the reader can decide for himself, upon the relative merits of the 

 two principal varieties of the dogs over which we shoot our game : 

 namely, the setters and the pointers. 



If our country were more circumscribed in its limits ; were our 

 shooting confined, say, to the States of New York, New Jersey, and 

 Pennsylvania, the question would be one easily solved ; for, if we 

 except snipe-shooting on the meadows, most of our gunning is done 

 in coverts ; filled, perhaps, with low growing underbrush or thick and 

 tangled vines and briers. It is true that quails feed in the stubble, 

 and the bevies are usually first flushed in the open, but they immedi- 

 ately seek the recesses of swamp or wood, where they must be 

 followed and routed singly if the bag is to be filled. The woodcock, 

 the king of our game birds, haunts, in summer particularly, only the 

 densest cover, where, by some little stream or marshy thicket, he finds 

 in the yielding ooze and soft earth the worms and larvae which form 

 his diet. It therefore stands to reason that the dog for our purpose 

 would be one like the setter, whose thick coat of hair would enable 

 him to withstand the attacks of briers and brush, and all the effects 

 of wet and cold ; whose feet, provided by nature with tufts of hair 

 between the toes, carry him without injury over the sharp flints of 

 the mountain-side, where the ruffed grouse (partridge) loves to bask 

 among the old logs and dead trees. 



But our country is not. all briery thicket or rough mountain-side. 

 At the West there is the "boundless prairie," the home of the pin- 

 nated grouse, or "chicken"; where "cat" or "bull" briers are not 

 found, and where wading is comparatively unknown. Here the 

 sleek-coated pointer is in his element; for "chicken "-shooting in 

 most States begins in August, and the heavy-coated setter suffers 

 from the heat and want of water, while the pointer with his close 

 hair hunts on, asking only for an occasional lap of water, until the 

 day's work is done. In many places also the Canada thistle abounds, 

 the burrs of which become so entangled in the coat of the setter as 

 to cause him perfect misery. I have quite recently known of several 

 instances of dogs positively refusing to work until the burrs were 

 removed. In all such places the pointer is undoubtedly the best dog 

 to shoot over. But all sportsmen do not go to the prairies in 

 August, nor is the pinnated grouse the only game bird to be found 

 there. In the latter part of September the ducks and snipe begin to 



