PAPER not being stiff enough, hat dirty, card too 

 thin, and leather apt to soften with the heat of the 

 barrel, the common, and, perhaps, the best punched 

 wadding is pasteboard. The larger the bore, the 

 thicker should be the wadding, which may be got to 

 any size, among the discarded cuttings of a book- 

 binder. 



All this attention, however, is only required in 

 covering the powder ; as (e.cccpt in double guns, 

 where the charge of one barrel has to encounter the 

 explosion of the other) it would be better to wad the 

 shot with common card, or even paper, knowing that 

 much resistance on that does more harm than good. 



Cartridges are bad, as they do not keep the powder 

 sufficiently air-tight, like the proper wadding ; add 

 to which they often fly unbroken, and can never be 

 depended on. I have a friend, however, an old sports- 

 man, who would, for many years, never even hear of 

 any other mode of loading. He was at last persuaded, 

 by a gentleman in Dorsetshire, as good a shot, and as 

 good a judge of a gun, as any man living, to try some 

 experiments, which he readily agreed to do, from a 



