THE COCKING SPANIEL. 201 
beat every inch of a ground at a trot, and never stir out 
of gunshot of the sportsman ; but it is, as I have said, but 
once or twice in a lifetime. 
These are the just reasons, why pointers and setters 
are in England, rarely, if ever, used in woodlands. 
Here the case is altered, since with the exception of 
snipe-shooting on the marshes and grouse-shooting on the 
prairies, there isin America no distinctly open shooting. 
In the Northern States and provinces, especially, where 
autumn shooting is and must ever be the principal and 
choicest pursuit of the true sportsman, open shooting and 
covert shooting are so inseparably combined, from the 
habits of the birds pursued, that no line of distinction 
can be drawn. es 
The quail, which is the principal object of pursuit, 
must be found and roused on his feeding grounds, in the 
stubbles, orchards or meadows, and, when once scattered, 
followed up and killed in the densest and heaviest brakes 
and coverts. 
To find them, the greatest speed and the widest range 
is necessary ; to finish up the scattered bevies in good style, 
the closest and most accurate, inch by inch ground, or foot, 
hunting. rath = 
The perfection of the thing, if means permitted, would 
be of course to drive the open grounds with setters or 
pointers, and then, when the game should be driven into 
covert, to couple up these, and let loose spaniels wherewith 
to beat the brakes and thickets. 
This, however, would require such a number of dogs 
and servants to be kept, so large an expense and so sys- 
g* 
