148 THE COMPLETE SHOT 



would probably have done just as he did for Duke, and scolded 

 him for what was held to show brains and capacity in 1870 by 

 some of the best sportsmen in the country who were acting as 

 judges, and at a time when everybody knew what dogs should 

 do, because everybody used them. 



However, it is dangerous to say a word by way of criticism 

 of an institution to which we owe it that setters and pointers 

 have been preserved at all. We should have had no dog 

 with a will to imitate Drake had it not existed. The only 

 object of saying anything is to appeal for a little more value 

 for "class," and a little less for trick performers. It is very 

 difficult to give effect to a wish of this sort in judging, because 

 faults are facts, and facts are stubborn things ; whereas class is 

 generally, but not always, a matter of opinion, on which judges 

 may hold conflicting views. The author was once hunting a 

 brace of setters at the National Trials, and they had done such 

 remarkable work that the late Sir Vincent Corbet, who was 

 judging, was heard to tell someone " that black - headed dog 

 has been finding birds in the next parish." Much of this work 

 had been done under the slope of a hill, where the spectators 

 could not see it ; they had formed a semicircle at the other end 

 of the last field that the brace had to do, and the black-headed 

 dog came up the field, treating as a fence the line of spectators 

 who had formed up 100 yards or so within the field. He 

 hunted up to their toes before turning along the line, and 

 dropped to a point within 10 yards of several hundred people, 

 who had been standing there so long that they were obviously 

 and audibly quite sure there was nothing at the point. When 

 the author came up, he could not move the pointing dog ; the 

 latter evidently thought he was too near already, and he had a 

 brace of partridges, much to everybody's surprise. This dog, 

 Sable Bondhu by name, was the very highest " class," and to 

 show how right the judge's estimate of him was, it may be 

 recorded that he was the performer of a very remarkable piece 

 of work on grouse. 



It was late in the season, and we had been hunting all the 

 morning and finding comparatively few grouse on a beat 



