SNIPE-SHOOTING. 111 
“On anything! on any game you mean.” 
“T mean, precisely, what I say—on anything. And 
that is the reason why I checked you for shooting a 
meadow-lark over them the other day, and why I am so 
particular as to the ‘who’ I take out with me. If small 
birds are killed indiscriminately with game, over dogs, 
before many days you will have as dead points at larks 
and brown thrushes, as at quail and ruffed grouse. If a 
man shoots pigeons, larks, and black-birds, or even 
reed-birds, for that matter, over my setters, he may do 
so once, but he will have no second chance, I promise 
you.” 
“‘T expect to see these dogs of yours paragons. They 
ought to be such, by all the trouble you take with them. 
I know no one who insists so much on doing every thing 
ship shape.” : 
“They are good dogs. The best broke dogs, to my 
mind, that I have seen in this country; but this is no 
fair opportunity to judge them. Their forte is high fast 
ranging for quail; and they are going to be tried to-day, 
in ground, and upon game, such as they never have 
seen. But come; you seem to have finished that abomi- 
nable coffee, so we had better get under way at once. 
It is a wild, bad morning, and the birds will scarcely 
lie; and if we want to make anything like a bag, we 
shall have to fag hard for it.” 
Thereupon, without further words, the two friends 
took up their guns and got under way; Timothy follow- 
