272 SPORTING STORIES 



had lost the watch, but imagined that it must have been 

 pulled from his pocket in getting through a hedge some 

 distance back. 



Mr Budd tells the following anecdote : — " When the 

 Regent's Park was pasture-land and had on it but one 

 house, Willan, the occupant, kept his thousand cows there. 

 I was in the hay-field with a friend named Powell, son of 

 the equerry to the Duke of Sussex, who said I might hide 

 his glove anywhere in the field and the retriever he had 

 with him would find it. The owner held the dog's head 

 pointed away from the direction I took. I pushed the 

 glove right under a large summer-rick ; but the dog quickly 

 found it. " 



Many years ago there was in England a French Count 

 named Peltier, who was one of the most amusing of com- 

 panions, and naturally was well received everywhere among 

 sportsman. The late Lord Seagrave met the Count in the 

 High Street, Cheltenham, just by the Plough Hotel, with a 

 splendid setter at his heels, and, with a view perhaps to 

 purchase, inquired if he was well broken to game. " Ah ! " 

 was the Count's reply, " superb ! When he do hear the 

 raport of de gun he fairly runs quite mad ! " The Earl 

 expressed no wish to buy that dog. 



" Nimrod " (C. J. Apperley) speaks of a favourite setter 

 over whom six shots were fired in a field of potatoes, and 

 he never stirred from his point, which proved to be a single 

 bird. Mr Britton, of Oldbury Hall, Atherstone, at once 

 offered 25 guineas for the dog, which was refused ; and 

 " Nimrod " shot over him for seven years more. This 

 setter's one failing was a partiality for butter, and when 

 passing a house about breakfast time he would sneak in 

 and snatch the butter off the table. 



One of the most ludicrous and at the same time fearsome 

 dog stories was told me by an old friend who held a posi- . 

 tion at the dynamite works in Ayrshire. A local sports- 

 man was out rabbit shooting in the neighbourhood of these 

 works when a party of scientific experts were experiment- 

 ing with the explosive by casting charges, enclosed in 

 water-tight cases with time-fuses attached, into the stream 

 immortalised by Robbie Burns. Forgetting all about the 



