y that the instructor should be a very good shot; which
probably is a more fortunate circumstance for me than for you. It should
even be received as a principle that birds ought to be now and then missed
to young dogs, lest some day, if your nerves happen to be out of order, or
a cockney companion be harmlessly blazing away, your dog take it into his
head and heels to run home in disgust, as I have seen a bitch, called
Countess, do more than once, in Haddingtonshire.

6. The chief requisites in a breaker are:--Firstly, command of temper,
that he may never be betrayed into giving one unnecessary blow, for with
dogs, as with horses, no work is so well done as that which is done
cheerfully; secondly, consistency, that in the exhilaration of his
spirits, or in his eagerness to secure a bird, he may not permit a fault
to pass unreproved, I do not say _unpunished_, which at a less exciting
moment he would have noticed--and that, on the other hand, he may not
correct a dog the more harshly because the shot has been missed, or the
game lost; and lastly, the exercise of a little reflection, to enable him
to judge what meaning an unreasonable animal is likely to attach to every
word and sign, nay to every look.

7. With the coarsest tackle, and worst flies, trout can be taken in
unflogged waters, while it requires much science, and the finest gut, to
kill persecuted fish. It is the same in shooting. With almost any
sporting-dog game can be killed early in the season, when the birds lie
like stones, and the dog can get within a few yards of them; but you will
require one highly broken to obtain many shots when they are wild. Then
any incautious approach of the dog, or any noise, would flush the game,
and your own experience will tell you that nothing so soon puts birds on
the run, and makes them so ready to take flight, as the sound of the human
voice, especially now-a-days, when farmers generally prefer the scythe to
the sickle, and clean husbandry, large fields, and trim narrow
hedges--affording no shelter from wet--have forced the partridge--a
_short-winged_[3] bird--unwillingly to seek protection, when arrived at
maturity, in ready flight rather than in concealment. Even the report of a
gun does not so much alarm them as the command, "Toho," or "Down charge,"
usually too, as if to make matters worse, hallooed to the extent of the
breaker's lungs. There are anglers who recommend silence as conducive to
success, and there are no