PREFACE vii 



always, and that precisely the reverse is true. However, 

 there are still people who by what they say must be judged 

 to hold to the unproved proposition that the stones breed 

 grouse. 



It would be necessary also to point out that some parrot 

 cries are a hundred years old and at least forty years out of 

 date, but are still repeated as if they were original and true. 

 Some of these are that pointers have better noses than setters, 

 and also require less water; that cheese affects dogs' noses 

 (sanitation by means of carbolic acid does so, but cheese is 

 harmless enough); that Irish setters have more stamina and 

 pace than any others. The latter statement I have seen dis- 

 proved for forty years at the field trials in this country, and 

 the former has always failed to find corroboration at the 

 champion stamina trials in America. I have had great chances 

 of forming an accurate opinion, as I entered and ran dogs at 

 the English championship trials over thirty-six years ago, and 

 I am the only one who has ever judged at the champion trials 

 of both England and America. 



It would be necessary also to repudiate the mistake that " foot 

 scent " is something exuding from the pad of an animal and left 

 upon the ground by the contact of the feet. It would be 

 necessary to affirm that fat from the adder is not the best cure 

 for the poison when dog or man is bitten, but that raw whisky 

 taken inwardly in large doses is ; and as dogs will sometimes 

 point these vipers, it might be well to affirm that these creatures 

 do not swallow their young, as is commonly supposed. It 

 would be necessary also to state that when partridges " tower " 

 they are not necessarily, but only sometimes, hit in the lungs, 

 but have often received a rap on the head just not enough to 

 render them totally unconscious ; and a case has lately been 

 reported where two unshot-at partridges in one covey 

 " towered " and fell, and were caught alive, grew stronger, and 

 upon one of them being killed it was found to be badly attacked 

 by enteritis, and not by lung disease. And consequently the 

 myth about " towered " partridges always falling dead and on 

 their backs does not require dealing with, as might have been 

 b 



