OVER DOGS' 103 



grouse over dogs, or to whom the organisation of 

 drives would be neither convenient nor practicable. 



As a youth I duly graduated with Don and Ponto, 

 ' Wallass ' and Lady on the higher moors of Forfar, 

 Perth, and Aberdeen, and approached a point with 

 as much keenness as ever Colonel Hawker felt when 

 sculling to a bunch of fowl on the ooze of Key- 

 haven, or advancing on a covey in the sheltering 

 stubbles of Longparish. Yet when I had been intro- 

 duced to the increased excitement, the superior marks- 

 manship, the ampler results, and the more picturesque 

 aspect of the birds in Yorkshire driving, I became 

 contemptuous of those who were content to plod day 

 by day after their dogs for a much smaller number 

 of comparatively easy shots. But one grows more 

 catholic with age. I have had many pleasant days 

 since then with other Dons and Pontos, and should 

 regret as much as anyone to see the extinction of so 

 valuable a race of dogs, or the complete abandonment 

 of so picturesque a science. 



I recall few days' shooting with greater pleasure 

 than a bag of fifty-three brace to my own gun, which 

 I made on September 23, 1872, on the late Sir Charles 

 Forbes's moor in Strathdon, Aberdeenshire, after many 

 hundreds of brace had been taken off the ground by 

 both driving and walking ; and that, considering the 



