326 MEASURING THE STRIKING FORCE OF 6H0T. 



draw liis own inferences. It is not my purpose here 

 to deal minutely and at length with a subject which 

 involves so many considerations. All I have attempt- 

 ed is to show that the present systems of measuring 

 the relative shooting powers of shot-guns afford no 

 means of arriving at any satisfactory conclusion. It 

 only remains for me to suggest a method which I be- 

 lieve will be found to meet all requirements with lit- 

 tle complication and expense, and at the same time 

 give results which may be depended upon as suffi- 

 ciently exact for all practical purposes, and in accord- 

 ance with the immutable laws of forces. 



Our first desideratum is to provide a resistance 

 which shall never at any time be sufficiently powerful 

 to destroy the original shape of the pellet resisted ; 

 second, one which shall be uniform and of the same 

 character at all times ; and third, one which will re- 

 cord in computable shape the whole amount of force 

 expended. A target which will answer those require- 

 ments with necessary exactness may be constructed of 

 thin sheets of pasteboard placed singly in a rack im- 

 mediately behind each other, and at a distance of two 

 or three inches apart. Each sheet is thus acted upon 

 separately ; the resistance opposed by each is practi- 

 cally the same, and from an observation of the number 

 of sheets perforated by each pellet, a comparison of 



