THE AMERICAN SNIPE. 99 
which make successful snipe-shooting one of the greatest 
feats in the art, and the crack snipe-finder and snipe- 
killer—for the two are one, or rather the second depends 
mainly on the first—one of the first, if not the first artist 
in the line. 
It is from this necessity of beating, oftentimes, very 
extensive tracts of land before finding birds, and there- 
fore beating very rapidly if you would find birds betimes, 
that I so greatly prefer and recommend the use of very 
fast, very highly-bred, and very far-ranging setters, to 
that of any pointer in the world, for snipe-shooting in the 
open—apart from their great superiority over the pointer 
in hardihood, endurance of cold, powers of retrieving, 
beauty and good-nature. 
Of course, speaking of dogs, whether setter, pointer, 
dropper, or cocking-spaniel, it is understood that we 
speak of dogs of equal qualities of nose, staunchness to 
the point, and steadiness at coming to the charge the 
instant a shot is fired. No dog which does not do all 
these things habitually, and of course, is worth the 
rope that should hang him; and no man is worthy the 
name of a shot or a sportsman, who cannot, and does not, 
keep his dogs, whether setters, pointers, or cockers, un- 
der such command that he can turn them to the right or 
left, bring them to heel, stop them, or down charge them, 
at two hundred yards distance if it be needful. 
If these things, then, be equal, as they can be made 
equal, though I admit a setter to be more difficultly kept 
