5934 



Birds. 



supposed power as much a myth as the supposed variety * of partridge. 

 No observant person can have had much to do with the pursuit of our 

 English game without having, again and again, found himself called 

 on to notice the strangest circumstances connected with scent: it 

 varies inconceivably in the same field, on the same day, nay in the 

 same hour. Sometimes in the case of a wounded bird the scent is so 

 strong that, instead of drawing steadily on, the dog points perpetually, 

 as if the bird were just ahead of him ; at other times he can scarcely 

 carry it on at all, losing it again and again, only recovering it after 

 repeated casts, and very likely losing it entirely in the end. A few 

 weeks since I winged a bird on the moor ; the ling was not high : my 

 dog took up the scent, which seemed very strong, immediately ; he 

 ''footed" the bird for 150 or 200 yards, step by step, turn by turn ; and 

 then all at once the trail was lost. Though one of the most perse- 

 vering dogs I ever saw in pursuit of a wounded bird, and with a most 

 excellent nose, he was quite unable to take up the scent again, though 

 working every yard of ground for a large space round : the fact was, 

 as I thought, that having worked the scent very slowly, pointing re- 

 peatedly, as if believing the bird to be in the next bunch of ling, the 

 partridge had gained time, and, on getting out of the ling on to a bare 

 place, — left bare by a recent fire, — on which, from its dryness and ab- 

 sence of vegetation, the scent would scarcely lie at all, even at first, 

 and had entirely escaped before the dog came up, had then gone off 

 with unimpeded speed, and by the time he came up literally " left no 

 trace behind." And yet this might have served a retentionist with a 

 good " case in point." Again, I have seen dogs in many cases run 

 over a dead bird, sometimes almost or quite touching it, and give no 

 token of noticing the scent. I have hunted a dog for ten minutes or 

 more over a spot of a few square yards, on which 1 knew a dead bird 

 lay, and have given it up as lost. The next shot I fire brings down a 

 winged bird, which runs through a thick bed of broom, breast high ; 

 thence through a hole in a dry stone wall, into a plantation of young 

 larches, with a very dense undergrowth of grass and w^eeds ; and at 

 last into the entrance of a drain : the dog hunts it unfalteringly, and 

 I bag it in due time. I return over the ground on which I had seen 



* Other circumstances connected with the assumed variety of partridges, even 

 more mythical than those noticed in the text, I pass over as scarcely worthy serious 

 comment; such, for instance, as that there is no increase, or the contrary, in their 

 numbers from year to year, — where there is a covey this year there is one next, and 

 no more ; that almost all the birds in any covey are males ; and so on. 



