POINTERS AND SETTERS 119 



vegetation, or to earth, before it reaches the dog's nose. It is 

 obviously not a question of strength of scent, for a dog having 

 missed a brace of close-crouched partridges will instantly find 

 the spot they rose from after they have gone, proving that, often 

 enough, the foot scent is very much the stronger. 



The author has no opinion how it is that some dogs detect 

 the difference between foot and body scent instantly, and others 

 cannot do it. It cannot be that one is more the breath of the 

 hunted animal than the other, because probably the otter evolves 

 no scent except breath when under water, and his line is as 

 huntable to the swimming pack as that of the land quarry to 

 the running hounds. Possibly the actual heat of the volatile 

 exudation may have something to say to the question. What- 

 ever the difference consists of, it is only some dogs that instantly 

 recognise it. These may or may not be animals able to detect a 

 scent a long way off No great wonder should be occasioned 

 by the inability to be certain : how often do human beings 

 recognise a picture, or a taste, without being able to give either 

 a name ? 



No attempt will be made to prove what canine-detected 

 scent is, except to this extent. It must be something that our 

 own olfactory nerves work above, or below. Just as there are 

 noises we cannot hear and colours we cannot see, so there are 

 doubtless scents of great power that we nevertheless cannot 

 detect even slightly. A dog will sometimes find and appear to 

 locate correctly a partridge, or rather a pair of them, at 200 

 yards. We may take those birds in hand and put them to our 

 noses, and even then we cannot detect the faintest scent of any 

 kind. Scent is supposed to spread as the square of the distance, 

 so that 600 feet squared would represent the difference in degree 

 of the scent of the bird in hand and that of the bird 600 feet 

 away. That is to say, one would be 360,000 times as strong as 

 the other, and we cannot detect the strong, whereas the dog finds 

 the weaker one. Surely this is enough to show that it is no 

 question of degree at all, but of something else. Possibly the 

 strong scent of deer and fox that we often do detect is misleading 

 us into the belief that we can sometimes smell what hounds run 



