GENUINE SPORT 149 



at first, are invaluable afterwards for wild shooting, where 

 birds and game are not over-plentiful, although in strictly 

 preserved ground, where partridges are as numerous as 

 poultry in a farm-yard, a slow, toddling old Spanish 

 pointer is more in keeping with this battue system ; but 

 a genuine sportsman repudiates such wholesome butchery. 

 To render sport intelligible to a sportsman, there must 

 be some excitement in the pursuit, an interest in the 

 working of his dogs, and a little uncertainty as to the 

 finding of his game ; and if at the end of the day he 

 returns home with four or five brace of birds and a hare 

 or two, his expectations and wants are satisfied, and he 

 feels in a more healthful state of mind and body than the 

 battue man who has probably not walked much more 

 than a mile to slaughter his twenty or thirty brace. I 

 would not if I could be a dead shot, a distinction which 

 some are so ambitious to obtain, and others so tenacious 

 of retaining, that they pick every shot rather than incur 

 the risk of missing two or three out of a score. I have 

 known dead shots so annoyed at failing at a fair mark, 

 as to be discomposed and out of temper the whole day 

 afterwards. Poor fellows ! they were much to be pitied. 

 It has always been my impression, and I think not an 

 erroneous one, that of aU species of dogs a fox-hound is 

 one of the most hardy and resolute, and, with good 

 training and feeding, the most capable of enduring severe 

 work. If four days, therefore, are found not too much 

 for a well-trained setter or pointer, three days' hunting a 

 week is nothing very extraordinary to expect from a 

 fox-hound in the prime of life ; and in drawing a com- 

 parison between the labour of the two animals in their 

 different vocations, I think the setter, which works all 

 the season, from grouse-shooting to the last day of 



