20 THE COMPLETE WILDFOWLER 



suspicion. People like Messrs, W. J. Jeffery and Co., of King" 

 Street, St. James's, or Mr. William Evans, of 63 Pall Mall — 

 the two best houses for this class of business — should alone 

 be consulted. 



I have known men buy second-hand guns from pawn- 

 brokers, and this is a most dangerous thing to do. 



Messrs. Jeffery have pointed out, and I can endorse all 

 they say, the unwisdom of such a course. If a sportsman 

 does purchase a gun from a pawnbroker, he should always take 

 the precaution of obtaining a receipted invoice, with a clear 

 and unmistakable statement that the gun is genuinely a second- 

 hand one. After this his best course would be to take the 

 weapon to a responsible gunmaker, and obtain his opinion as 

 to the truth of the statement upon the invoice. 



"For some years past certain pawnbrokers in London have been 

 defrauding the public by selling as second-hand weapons, that they 

 represented to be of high-class-make guns, and particularly Cordite 

 Double Expresses, that are really cheap weapons of Belgian or 

 Birmingham make, highly engraved in imitation of the London 

 patterns. These guns and rifles usually are named by certain little 

 traders in London, who make a living by supplying the pawnbrokers 

 with guns at a trifling charge for the use of the name. Some of them 

 even go so far as to state that they, or their ancestors, were gunmakers 

 by appointment to some long since deceased member of the Royal 

 Family. 



"An examination of some of the pawnbrokers' lists who deal in 

 guns will show as many as twenty or thirty guns and rifles bearing, per- 

 haps, one of these little makers' names, and the same descriptions of 

 guns and rifles will be found for several years back in their lists. 

 When a gun or rifle is sold they can at once replace it with a similar 

 one from the little dealer in a back street." 



Thus a leading firm of gunmakers — Messrs. Jeffery to wit ; 

 and they further add : — 



" Should any sportsman find that he has been defrauded by one 

 of these unscrupulous dealers, his best plan is to put the matter into 



