102 WADDING. 



confidence of making good his argument in favour of 

 cartridges. What the particulars of this trial were, 

 I do not exactly remember ; but I know that my 

 friend has never used a cartridge since. 1 



As we often, however, want to load in a hurry 

 when wildfowl are every moment passing on the wing 

 at dusk, and as, on this occasion, cartridges might be 

 handy ; I, since publishing the second edition, tried 

 a duck-gun with a few quires of paper, taking care 

 to seal up that end which comes in contact with the 

 powder. By the result of this experiment it appeared, 

 that although there was very little inferiority in point 

 of strength, or in the number of shot put into the 

 paper, yet the cartridges did not throw them near so 

 regular as the usual mode of loading. I should, 

 therefore, make choice of them only when I wished 

 to fire at random, into large flocks of fowl, that might 

 be every moment flying past me ; but should certainly 

 avoid the use of cartridges when I had leisure to load 

 in the common way, and more particularly in field 

 shooting, where I had only a single object to fire at, 

 and which object might be missed, with the best 

 possible aim, when a gun threw the shot in patches. 



Nothing is better to punch your wadding on than 

 a round block, sawed out of some close grained kind 

 of wood ; such as beech, chestnut, lime, sycamore, 

 &c. Lead is improper, as it wears out the punch. 



Be careful not to let your wadding get damp, or, 

 in drying, it may shrink so much as to become too 

 small for the caliber of your gun. 



