MR. L G'S LETTER. 323 



fortnight of partridge-shooting you want quiet, close rangers who 

 will never move until told. In the turnip fields in Norfolk you will 

 get among lots of birds, and you may then fill your bag any day, pro- 

 vided you can hunt the field in perfect quiet ; but with a rattling, 

 blustering dog you will hardly get a shot, yet you want a dog that 

 shall be neither too large nor too heavy. 



" Not one dog in fifty of the many I see, properly hunts his ground. 

 The reason is this. The keepers in the north, yet none understand 

 their duties better, take out a lot of dogs along with an old one ; 

 off they all start like oiled lightning some one way, the others just 

 the contrary : one gets a point, they all drop and stop. The keepers 

 say, is not that beautiful ? is it not a picture for Landseer ? I have 

 followed the party on the moors over the self-same ground a dozen of 

 times, and obtained with my brace of close rangers and good finders 

 double the number of shots that they did, and three times the amount 

 of game ; for I was walking at my ease, and giving my dogs time to 

 make out the birds which is very essential in the middle of the day, 

 when there is a scorching sun. 



" I recollect one instance in particular. Some years ago I had just 

 arrived at the top of a very stiff hill on the Bradfield Moors (in York- 

 shire), and was making for a certain spring where I had forwarded 

 my luncheon, and a fresh supply of ammunition, when I saw, imme- 

 diately before me, two gentlemen with their keepers, and four very 

 good-looking setters, hunting the precise ground I had to take to get 

 to my point about a mile off. I therefore sat down for a quarter of 

 an hour to let them get well ahead. They found several straggling 

 birds; but there was such a noise from the keepers rating and 

 hallooing to the dogs, that, although they got five or six shots, they 

 only bagged one brace of birds. When they reached the spring, they 

 observed me coming over the very ground they had beat only a 

 quarter of an hour before. I got ten shots, every one to points, and 

 killed nine birds. I was highly complimented on the beautiful, quiet 

 style of my dogs, &e., and was offered a goblet of as fine old sherry 

 as man ever drunk. I need not observe that I much relished it after 

 my morning's walk. The gentlemen said, that if I felt disposed to 

 take the dogs to the Tontine Inn, Sheffield, when I had done with 

 them, I should find fifty guineas there awaiting me ; but I declined 

 the offer, as on several occasions I had repented having yielded to the 

 temptation of a long price for favourite dogs. The brace I refused 

 to sell were young setters, bred by Tom Cruddas, keeper to Bowes, 

 Esq., near Barnard Castle, Durham. I subsequently found them very 

 unfitted for the style of work required in small fields and indifferent 

 stubble, and I was well beaten in a trial with them against a brace of 

 Russian setters. I afterwards procured the latter by exchanging my 

 Englishmen for them. For two years I was much pleased with the 

 foreigners, and bred some puppies from them ; they did not, however, 

 turn out to my satisfaction. I then tried a cross with some of the 

 best dogs I could get in England and from Russia, but could never 

 obtain any so good as the original stock. I have now got into a 

 breed of red and white pointers from the splendid stock of the late 



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