HINTS TO PURCHASERS. ()23 



he pointed I should have employed the checkcord* 

 with a spike, giving him a liberal allowance of slack line 

 234. Had I thus treated him throughout the day, 

 I have little doubt but that he would have become a 

 reformed character; though an occasional outbreak 

 might not unreasonably have been expected. See 205 to 

 208. 



261. To create a feeling of self-dependence, obviously 

 there is no better plan than for a considerable time to take 

 out the dog by himself, and thus force him to trust for 

 sport to his own unaided powers; and when he is at length 

 hunted in company, never to omit paying him the com- 

 pliment of attending to every indication he evinces 

 of being upon birds, even occasionally to the unfair 

 neglect of confirmed points made by the other dogs. 



262. I conceive those dogs must be considered the 

 best which procure a persevering sportsman most >hots 

 in a season and lose him fewest winged birds.f If you 

 are anxious for your pupil to attain this superlative ex- 

 cellence, I will repeat it, at the risk of being accused 



* I am glad to say I have never had occasion to adopt so severe a 

 remedy as the fo'lowing; but I have heard of an otherwise incorri- 

 gible taste for bloo 1 being cured by a partridge pierced transversely 

 with two knitting-pins being adroitly substituted for the fallen bird 

 which the dog had been restrained by a checkcord from bolting. 

 The pins were cut to a length somewhat less than the diameter 

 of its body, and were fixed at right angles to one another. Several 

 slight wires would, I think, have answered better. 



f And if hares are shot to him, fewest wounded haree. 



