Tracking Footsteps. 121 
are sufficiently attached to their master to make the 
effort. Whether bulldogs and pugs, with their contracted 
nasal bones, or any of the degraded creatures used as lap 
dogs, would evince any such aptitude might well be doubted. 
But that bulldogs are not wholly incapable of this is certain. 
The retriever above méntioned was so well known among 
friends and acquaintances for his faculty of discovering my 
whereabouts in most difficult circumstances that I was often 
asked to give an exhibition of his powers. While looking 
on at a cricket match in a county town this became the 
subject of conversation, and it was suggested that I should 
tie the dog up, walk home through the town, and leave 
directions that he should be let loose in half an hour. That 
would have been no considerable task for him, but I do not 
choose to let my dogs run the risk of being maimed by that 
species of ruffian which always is on the look-out to fling a 
stone at a dog when his master is not at hand. As soon as 
the match was over, however, I gave him in charge to a 
friend, with directions to allow me five minutes’ law. The 
people were then crossing the ground in all directions. I 
walked to the other side of the ground among them, got over 
the fence, and hid myself in a ditch on the opposite side 
of a large field. When released, he hunted my trail slowly, 
I was told, but with no hesitation; and from my place of 
concealment I saw him jump the fence where I had climbed 
it, and came racing along the scent, never lifting his nose 
until he rushed into the ditch, much surprised and delighted 
at having found me so soon. 
Now, in all probability, my trail across the cricket field 
was cut up into a hundred short lengths by the footsteps 
of others, and these were, therefore, so many elements of 
distraction in the pursuit of one scent; yet he was able to 
pick out the desired trail with certainty. Had anyone of 
the owners of those footsteps been the master of the dog 
he would, no doubt, have been equally certain of following 
them. Every footprint must have given a distinct scent, 
