As European dogs seldom live in China more than three or four years, and often less, it is necessary to always have puppies coming on if you do not want your shooting to be spoiled, for it is useless to try and get pheasants out of the thick cover without them. Dysentery is a very prevalent canine disease, but their most deadly enemy, and one existing in no other country that I know of, is worms in the heart. How the germs get into the blood no doctor has yet been able to say, but thin, white worms resembling vermicelli cluster round the heart, living on the blood, until they become so numerous as to eventually choke an artery, when death is instantaneous. In the case of a favourite dog, on which a doctor kindly performed a _post-mortem_ examination, these worms were in such numbers that I positively could not see the heart at all. Native dogs are useless for sport, as they seem to be devoid of that friendly intelligence so noticeable in our own breeds, while their powers of scent are much inferior. I have heard that in the island of Hainan a certain breed exists which is very good for hunting leopards and wild boar, but this I cannot guarantee. In the winter of 1889 I was invited by a friend to join him in his house-boat a few miles below Chinkiang, when we could shoot together next day and then have Christmas dinner on board. I hired a small sampan to sail me down, together with my boy, taking only a bottle of whisky, a few things for tiffin and a plum cake, the last being a Christmas gift from a Norwegian lady. Starting at noon, it was about three o'clock and near the rendezvous, when we sighted a flock of geese asleep in the sun on a mud-bank. I ordered the sampan-man to get as near as possible, and when the geese rose at a distance of about sixty yards, knocked down a couple with two charges of S.S.G. A minute later another came flying overhead calling to its wounded mate, and this also I dropped without pity. The first two, being only winged, gave a lot of trouble, as they swam and dived with great speed, but all three were eventually secured. There was still an hour before dark, and seeing no signs of my friend I went on shore and bagged three pheasants before returning to the boat. Next morning, after passing a cold and miserable night in the tiny cabin of the dirty little sampan, I started with gun and dog at about eight o'clock--fully expecting that the house-boat would turn up during my absence--and shot all day, killing eleven pheasants, two deer, three woodcock, seven duck and one pigeon. As by dark there were still no signs of my expected host I had no choice but to return home.