210 THE COMPLETE WILDFOWLER 
denying the fact. Of course, we do not remember these 
miss-fires as being of serious account, for the object ‘‘ snapped ” 
at may be merely a partridge, rabbit, or so on. The punt-gun 
miss-fire may be at hundreds of fowl—something worth re- 
membering as a very bitter experience indeed. Rarely as 
‘‘snaps’’ do occur with the best of shoulder guns and ammuni- 
tion, they serve as good instances to show that they are equally 
probable with punt-guns, and as the latter have to be used 
under atmospheric conditions greatly against the protection 
of gunpowder, we venture to say that it is only when every 
care is taken that a discharge can with any degree of certainty 
be relied on. Otherwise, nothing but dissatisfaction can be 
expected. 
All punt-guns should be designed so as to have an ignition 
arrangement according and suitable to the size of bore and the 
charge of powder to be fired. We have seen punt-guns, and 
large ones, too (muzzle-loaders), which were fitted with single 
horizontal pillar nipples of not more than half the size they 
ought to have been. Consequently, these guns never satis- 
factorily shot the charge they should have done. Their owners 
admitted that by experiment they found these weapons fired 
a small (i.e. for the size of bore) charge best. And why 
wonder otherwise, for it was evident that a heavy, or even 
correct, load could never be properly ignited in these guns, 
owing to the undeniable fact that their nipples were of such a 
character or design, that the flame intended to fire the gun 
could never be developed sufficiently strong to flash into the 
body of the main powder charge, as it should do to give good 
results. One of these guns here referred to, which we have at 
the present moment in our mind’s eye, was, we are rather 
proud to say, altered in its ignition arrangement by the writer, 
with such an improvement to its shooting, that its owner, who 
had used it for many years, in the first three shots after the 
alteration bagged more fowl than he had been able to do in any 
