912 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
tant part of his duty, however, is to find and bring the 
game that has dropped. To teach him tv find is easy 
enough, for a young water-spaniel will as readily take to 
the water, as a pointer puppy will stop; but to bring his 
game without tearing it, is a more difficult lesson, and the 
most difficult of all is to make him suspend the pursuit of 
the wounded game while the sportsman reloads.” 
He must, in a few words, be taught invariably to beat 
his ground, crossing and recrossing it in endless intersect- 
ing semicircles, never beyond twenty paces distant from 
his master, and to hunt mute. The latter being far easier 
than with the cocker, springer, or even the Clumber dog, 
since the water-spaniel does not give tongue so fiercely or 
so instinctively as his land congener. 
Secondly, he must drop to shot, at the report of the 
gun, and lie steadily at charge, until he be ordered to go 
on, when he will recover wounded birds with inconceivable 
cleverness, following them foot by foot through tussocky 
bogs, thick flag tufts, and the most closely tangled marsh 
grasses, or diving after them in deep waters, till they 
shall give out in their own element, from mere weariness. 
For wild fowl shooting in large inland lakes he is in- 
valuable, merely as a retriever, particularly where there 
is much reed, wild rice or marsh grass, among which crip- 
ples will skulk so cunningly as to defy the most accurate 
marker; but their great forte is where teal, mallard, 
wood-duck, pintails, and the other fresh-water varieties fre- 
quent large flat grassy meadows, intersected by small la- 
goons, creeks or rivulets in which they feed ; or still more, 
where a slow winding stream, bordered with willows and 
