CH. xvi.] POINT VOLUNTARILY RESUMED. 287 



inquiries, my friend, who seemed to attach no value to the feat, but 

 to take it as a matter of course, told me that he had called the 

 bitch away from her point lest her presence should alarm the birds, 

 and make them take wing before I could come up. 



519. As my friend was obliged to return home early, he left the 

 lady with me. I had marked some partridges into the leeward-side 

 of a large turnip-field. I could not get her to hunt where I wished ; 

 I, therefore, no longer noticed her, but endeavoured to walk up the 

 birds without her assistance. After a time she rejoined me, and 

 ranged well and close. I then proceeded to beat the other part of 

 the field the part she had already hunted contrary to my wishes. 

 Instead of making a cast to the right or left, on she went, directly 

 ahead, for nearly three hundred yards. I was remarking to my 

 attendant that she must be nearly useless to all but her master, 

 when I observed her come to a stiff point. I then felt convinced 

 that I had done her great injustice, that she must have found 

 and left this covey, whilst I was hunting far to leeward, and 

 that she had gone forward to resume her point, as soon as my face 

 was turned in the right direction. On my mentioning all this 

 to her owner, he said he had no doubt but that such was the case, as 

 she would often voluntarily leave game to look for him, and again 

 stand at it on perceiving that he watched her movements. 



520. An old Kentish acquaintance of mine, though he is still a 

 young man, has an Irish setter that behaved in a very similar 



manner. F r, having severely wounded a hare in cover, put the 



dog upon the scent. He immediately took it up, but " roaded " 

 so fast as to be soon out of sight. After a fruitless search for the 



setter, F r was obliged to whistle two or three times, when he 



showed himself at the end of a ride, and by his anxious looks and 

 motions seemed to invite his master to come on. This he did. 

 The sagacious beast, after turning two corners, at each of which he 



stopped until F r came up, went into cover and resumed the 



point, which my friend feels satisfied the dog must have left on 

 hearing the whistle, for the wounded hare, whose leg was broken, 

 was squatted within a yard of him. Such instances of a voluntary 

 relinquishment and resumption of a point, must lead us to think 

 that this accomplishment cannot be very difficult to teach dogs who 

 have been accustomed to the gratification of always seeing their 

 game carefully deposited in the bag. 



521. In a capital little treatise on field diversions, written by 

 a Suffolk sportsman upwards of seventy years ago, it is recorded 

 that a pointer bitch, belonging to a Doctor Bigsbye, used to give 

 tongue if she found in cover and was not perceived, and that she 

 would repeatedly bark to indicate her locality until she was relieved 

 from her point. 



