lly hearing the monotonous sound, it would prove as little of an
incentive to exertion as a continued chirrup to a horse; and yet if
habituated to it, your dog would greatly miss it whenever hunted by a
stranger. Not unregarded, however, would it be by the birds, to whom on a
calm day it would act as a very useful warning.

127. Though you have not moors, fortunately we can suppose your fields to
be of a good size. Avoid all which have recently been manured. Select
those that are large, and in which you are the least likely to find
birds, until his spirits are somewhat sobered, and he begins partly to
comprehend your instructions respecting his range. There is no reason why
he should not have been taken out a few days before this, _not to show him
birds_, but to have commenced teaching him how to traverse his ground.
Indeed, if we had supposed him of a sufficient age--111--he might by this
time be somewhat advanced towards a systematic beat. It is seeing birds
early that is to be deprecated, not his being taught how to range.

128. _Be careful to enter every field at the leeward_[22] side--about the
middle,--that he may have the wind to work against. Choose a day when
there is a breeze, but not a boisterous one. In a calm the scent is
stationary, and can hardly be found unless accidentally. In a gale it is
scattered to the four quarters.[23] You want not an undirected ramble,
but a judicious traversing beat under your own guidance, which shall leave
no ground unexplored, and yet have none twice explored.

129. Suppose the form of the field, as is usually the case, to approach a
parallelogram or square, and that the wind blows in any direction but
diagonally across it. On entering at the leeward side send the dog from
you by a wave of your hand or the word "On." You wish him, while you are
advancing up the middle of it, to cross you at right angles, say from
right to left,--then to run up-wind for a little, parallel to your own
direction, and afterwards to recross in front of you from left to right,
and so on until the whole field is regularly hunted. To effect this,
notwithstanding your previous preparatory lessons, you will have to show
him the way, as it were--setting him an example in your own person,--by
running a few steps in the direction you wish him to go--say to the
right,--cheering him on to take the lead. As he gets near the extremity of
his beat, when he does not observe you, he can steal a small advance in