23 



ahead of you, as you move forward on the line 

 of inarch. If he turns out a high ranger, you 

 will have enough to do to keep a straight line 

 in the midst of his beats : but be sure you do 

 not get ahead of his range, for fear of inducing 

 the defect which, through the course of some 

 past pages, I have been endeavouring to guard 

 against*. It is, I own, a work of labour to 

 complete this perfection of quartering; but if 

 it be your luck to have an animal of capabilities 

 to deal with, it is well worth all the toil : it will 

 spare you the dull waste hereafter of many a 



* I must not have it objected to me that, in my advance 

 before from A to D, &c. I have incurred this risk : I con- 

 sider him there as in leading-strings; and I have no other 

 method of teaching his proper turn to windward, and of 

 getting him on the way I want him. The manner in which 

 these leading-strings are to be dropped, is indicated in his 

 progress at H, I, K : and, to the regular sportsman, it is 

 scarcely necessary to say, that when in perfection, I expect 

 my pupil, during my advance from one imaginary station to 

 another, as from H to K, to make the whole evolution K, L, 

 M, N ; that is to say, having passed me to the left at K, as I 

 continue to march forward from H, and taking his own turn 

 of further inquiry into the wind at L, he makes an advance 

 to M, in obvious unison with mine towards N ; where, finally, 

 taking his distance under the guidance of his own sagacity 

 (but, at first, with instant attention to the check of the whistle, 

 and in most intelligent obedience to the signal of my hand 

 waving him to the right), he makes his cross direct ; so that 

 by the time I am got on to K, he may- be passing me, or 

 nearly so, at N. 



