120 "GROUSE." COL. T Y'S BITCH. [CH. vn. 



their ground, would walk straight up to the birds if 

 there were any in the field. It has never been my 

 luck, I do not say to have possessed such marvellous 

 animals, but even to have been favoured with a 

 sight of them. I therefore am inclined to think that, 

 let your means be what they may, you would find it 

 better not to advertise for creatures undoubtedly most 

 rare, but to act upon the common belief that, as the 

 scent of birds, more or less, impregnates the air, no dog, 

 let his nose be ever so fine, can, except accidentally, 

 wind game unless he seek for the taint in the air, and 

 that the dog who regularly crosses the wind must have 

 a better chance of finding it, than he who only works 

 up wind, and that down wind he can have little other 

 chance than by " reading." 



203. Thus had I written, for such was ray opinion, but Colonel 



T y, mentioned in 99, having seen the preceding paragraph, 



in the first edition, spoke to me on the subject, and, as he thinks 

 such a dog occasionally may be found, and gave good reasons for so 

 believing, I begged him to commit the singular facts to paper ; for 

 I felt it a kind of duty to give my readers the most accurate infor- 

 mation in my power on a matter of such interest. He writes : 



204. " I should like to show you the portrait of a favourite old 

 pointer of mine, who certainly had the gift of walking up straight 

 to her birds without, apparently, taking the trouble of looking for 

 them, and about which I see you are naturally somewhat sceptical 

 It was in this wise : 



205. " I had gone down into Wales, with my Norfolk pointers, in 

 order to commit great slaughter upon some packs of grouse fre- 

 quenting the moors belonging to my brother-in-law ; my dogs, I 

 think, were fair average ones, but the three did not find so many 

 birds, I was going to say, in a week as old l Grouse ' (the pointer 

 alluded to) did in a day. She had been, previous to my arrival, a 

 sort of hanger-on about the stables, gaining a scanty subsistence 

 by foraging near the house, until she was four years old, without 

 ever having been taken to the adjoining moor, at least, in a regular 

 way. 



206. " One morning as I was riding up to the moor she followed 

 me ; happening to cast my eyes to the right I saw her pointing 

 very steadily in a batch of heather not far from a young plantation. 

 I rode up, and a pack of grouse rose within twenty yards. This 

 induced me to pay more attention to my four-footed companion ; 



