IMPLEMENTS FOB COLLECTING, AND THEIR USE. 3 



ridges come already capped, so that this bother is avoided, as it is not ordinarily worth while 

 to reload them. They are made of different colors, distinguishing various sizes of shot used 

 without employ of colored wads otherwise required. They may be taken into the field empty 

 and loaded on occasion to suit ; but it is better to pay a trifle extra to have them loaded at the 

 shop. In such case, about four-fifths of the stock should contain mustard-seed, nearly all the 

 rest about No. 7, a very few being reserved for about No. 4. Cost of ammunition is hardly 

 appreciably increased ; its weight is put in the most conveniently portable shape ; the whole 

 apparatus for carrying it, and loading the shells, is dispensed with ; much time is saved, the 

 entire drudgery (excepting gun-cleaning) of collecting being avoided. I was prepared in this 

 way during the summer of 1873 for the heaviest work I ever succeeded in accomplishing during 

 the same length of time. In June, when birds were plentiful, I easily averaged fifteen skins 

 a day, and occasionally made twice as many. As items serving to base calculations, I may 

 mention that in four months I used about two thousand cartridges, loaded, at $42 per M., 

 with seven-eighths of an ounce of shot and two and three-fourths drachms of powder ; only 

 about three hundred were charged with shot larger than mustard-seed. In estimating the size 

 of a collection that may result from use of a given number of cartridges, it may not be safe for 

 even a good shot to count on much more than half as many specimens as cartridges. The 

 number is practically reduced by the following steps : — Cartridges lost or damaged, or orig- 

 iually defective ; shots missed ; birds killed or wounded, not recovered ; specimens secured 

 unfit for preservation, or not preserved for any reason ; specimens accidentally spoilt in stuffing, 

 or subsequently damaged so as to be not worth keeping ; and finally, use of cartridges to 

 supply the table. 



Other Weapons, etc. — An ordinary single-barrel gun will of course answer; but is a 



sorry makeshift, for it is sometimes so poorly constructed as to be unsafe, and can at best be 

 only just half as eff'ective. This remark does not apply to any of the fine single-barrelled breech- 

 loaders now made. You will find them very efi"ective weapons, and they are not at all expen- 

 sive. An arm now much used by collectors is a kind of breech-loading pistol, with or without 

 a skeleton gun-stock to screw into the handle, and taking a particular style of metal cartridge, 

 charged with a few grains of powder, or with nothing but the fulminate. They are very light, 

 very cheap, safe and easy to work, and astonishingly effective up to twenty or thirty yards; 

 making probably tlie best ''second choice" after the matchless double-barrelled breech- 

 loader itself. The cane-gun should be mentioned in this connection. It is a single-barrel, 

 lacquered to look like a stick, with a brass stopper at the muzzle to imitate a ferule, counter- 

 sunk hammer and trigger, and either a shnple curved handle, or a light gunstock-shaped piece 

 that screws in. The affair is easily mistaken for a cane. Some have acquired considerable 

 dexterity in its use ; my own experience with it is very limited and unsatisfactory ; the handle 

 always hit me in the face, and I generally missed my bird. It has only two recommendations. 

 If you approve of shooting on Sunday and yet scruple to shock popular prejudice, you can slip 

 out of town unsuspected. If you are shooting where the law forbids destruction of small birds, 

 — a wise and good law that you may sometimes be inclined to defy, — artfully careless handling 

 of the deceitful implement may prevent arrest and fine. A blow-gun is sometimes used. It is 

 a long slender tube of wood, metal, or glass, through which clay -balls, tiny arrows, etc., are 

 projected by force of the breath. It must be quite an art to use such a weapon successfully, 

 and its employment is necessarily exceptional. Some uncivilized tribes are said to possess 

 marvellous skill in the use of long bamboo blow-guns ; and sucli people are often valuable 

 employes of the collector. I have had no experience with the noiseless air-gun, which is, in 

 effect, a modified blow-gun, compressed air being the explosive power. Nor can I say much 

 of various methods of trapping birds that may be practised. On these points I must leave you 

 to your own devices, with the remark that horse-hair snares, set over a nest, are often of great 



