564 DOG-BREAKTXG. 



an extent of country they could sweep over in an hour 

 and not leave a bird behind ! And consider what time 

 and labor must have been spent in inculcating so noble 

 a range. He would have been far better paid if he had 

 received less than half the money as soon as they 

 "pointed steadily," both at the living and the dead; 

 " down charged ;" " backed :" and were broken from 

 " chasing hare," or noticing rabbits. 



171. Some men fancy that the faster they walk, the 

 more country they hunt. This is far from being always 

 the case. Dogs travel at one rate, whether you walk 

 fast or slow, and the distance between the parallels on 

 which they work being determined by the fineness of 

 their noses, and the goodness of the scent ought not to 

 be affected by your pace. Suppose, therefore, that you 

 shoot in an unenclosed country, whether you walk quickly, 

 or merely crawl along, the only difference in the beat of 

 your dogs ought to be that, in the latter case, they range 

 further to the right and the left. You thus make up in 

 your breadth what you lose in your length of beat. 



172. Nor do the fastest dogs, however well they may 

 be broken, always truly hunt the most ground. The 

 sl6wer dogs have frequently finer olfactory nerves than 

 their fleeter rivals, therefore the parallels on which the 

 former work may correctly be much wider apart than 

 the parallels of the latter. The finer nose in this manner 

 commands so much more ground that it beats the 

 quicker heels out and out. 



173. You will see, then, how judicious it is to show 



