is friend touches upon a haunt; nor will it instruct him to
look from time to time towards the gun for directions. It may teach him a
range, but not to hunt where he is ordered; nor will it habituate him to
vary the breadth of the parallels on which he works, according as his
master may judge it to be a good or bad scenting day.

142. To establish the rare, noble beat I am recommending,--one not
hereafter to be deranged by the temptation, of a furrow in turnips or
potatoes,--you must have the philosophy not to hunt your dog in them until
he is accustomed in his range to be guided entirely by the wind and your
signals, and is in no way influenced by the nature of the ground. Even
then it would be better not to beat narrow strips across which it would be
impossible for him to make his regular casts. Avoid, too, for some time,
if you can, all small fields--which will only contract his range,--and all
fields with trenches or furrows, for he will but too naturally follow
them instead of paying attention to his true beat. Have you never, in low
lands, seen a young dog running down a potato or turnip trench, out of
which his master, after much labor, had no sooner extracted him than he
dropped into the adjacent one? It is the absence of artificial tracks
which makes the range of nearly all dogs _well_ broken on the moors, so
much truer than that of dogs hunted on cultivated lands.

143. Moreover, in turnips, potatoes, clover, and the like thick shelter,
birds will generally permit a dog to approach so closely, that if he is
much accustomed to hunt such places, he will be sure to acquire the evil
habit of pressing too near his game when finding on the stubbles--instead
of being startled as it were into an instantaneous stop the moment he
first winds game,--and thus raise many a bird out of gun-shot that a
cautious dog--one who slackens his pace the instant he judges that he is
beating a likely spot--would not have alarmed.

144. "A _cautious_ dog!" Can there well be a more flattering epithet?[24]
Such a dog can hardly travel too fast[25] in a tolerably open country,
where there is not a superabundance of game, _if_ he really hunt with an
inquiring nose;--but to his master what an all-important "if" is this! It
marks the difference between the sagacious, wary, patient, yet diligent
animal, whose every sense and every faculty is absorbed in his endeavor to
make out birds, not for himself but the gun, and the wild harum-scarum who