CH. vii.] RANGE EASIEST TAUGHT ON MOORS. 113 



absence of artificial tracks which makes the range of 

 nearly all dogs well broken on the moors so much truer 

 than that of dogs hunted on cultivated lands. 



193. Moreover, in turnips, potatoes, clover, and the 

 like thick shelter, birds will generally permit a dog to 

 approach so closely, that if he is much accustomed to 

 hunt such places, he will be sure to acquire the evil 

 habit of pressing too near his game when finding on the 

 stubbles (instead of being startled as it were into an 

 instantaneous stop the moment he first winds game), 

 and thus raise many a bird out of gun-shot that a 

 cautious dog, one who slackens his pace the instant he 

 judges that he is beating a likely spot, would not have 

 alarmed. 



194. " A cautious dog " ! Can there well be a more 

 flattering epithet ? * Such a dog can hardly travel too 

 fast f in a tolerably open country, where there is not a 

 superabundance of game, if he really hunt with an 

 inquiring nose ; but to his master what an all-important 

 " if" is this ! It marks the difference between the saga- 

 cious, wary, patient, yet diligent animal, whose every 

 sense and every faculty is absorbed in his endeavour to 

 make out birds, not for himself but for the gun, and the 

 wild harum-scarum who blunders up three-fourths of 

 the birds he finds. No ! not finds, but frightens, for he 

 is not aware of their presence until they are on the 

 wing, and seldom points unless he gets some heedless 

 bird right under his nose, when an ignoramus, in admi- 



* Provided always he be not " standing by eye ; " which, how- 



perpetually pointing, as occa- ever, may have made him a first- 



sionally will happen and is the rate hand at pointing crows, 



more likely to happen if he has + With the understanding that 



been injudiciously taught as a the pace does not make him " shut 



puppy to set chickens, and has up" before the day is over, 

 thereby acquired the evil habit of 



