Of course, speaking of dogs, whether setter, pointer, dropper, or cocking-spaniel, it is understood that we speak of dogs of equal qualities of nose, staunchness to the point, and steadiness at coming to the charge the instant a shot is fired. No dog which does not do all these things habitually, and of course, is worth the rope that should hang him; and no man is worthy the name of a shot or a sportsman, who cannot, and does not, keep his dogs, whether setters, pointers, or cockers, under such command that he can turn them to the right or left, bring them to heel, stop them, or down charge them, at two hundred yards distance if it be needful. If these things, then, be equal, as they can be made equal, though I admit a setter to be more difficultly kept in discipline than a pointer—the fastest setter you can get, is the best dog for snipe-shooting; his superiority, in other points, infinitely counterbalancing the greater trouble it requires to break and control him. I am well aware that it has been said, and that by authorities, that the best dog over which to shoot snipe, is an old, slow, broken-down, staunch pointer, who crawls along at a foot’s pace, and never misses, overruns, or flushes a bird. And so, in two cases, he is; but in one case, no dog is just as good as he is, and in the other, the argument is one of incapacity to use what is best, and therefore is no argument. If birds are so thick on the grounds, and so tame that you can fill your bag in walking over one or two acres at a foot’s pace, a very slow pointer _is_ better than fast setters—but no dog at all, your walking up your birds yourself, which you can do just as quickly as the dog can, is better than the slow pointer. Indeed, on very small grounds, very thickly stocked, it is by far the most killing way to use no dog, but to walk up the birds. If a man is so weak and infirm of purpose, or so ignorant of the first principles of his art, as to be unable to control his setters, he must, I suppose, use a slow pointer; but it cannot matter what dog such a man uses, he never can be a sportsman. If there be a hundred birds lying, and lying well on one acre of feeding-ground, the birds can be killed without a dog, or with a slow dog, as you will; any man who can pull a trigger must fill his bag. If there be a hundred birds scattered, wild, over five hundred acres of ground, where are you with your slow dog, or your no dog? Just no where. While you are painfully picking up your three or four birds with your slow pointer, your true sportsman, and slashing walker, with his racing up-head and down-stern setters, will have found fifty, and bagged twenty-five or thirty.