WARWICK WOODLANDS. 147 



with bullets patched in that slovenly and most unsportsmanlike 

 fashion." 



" I should like to know what the deuce you mean by slovenly 

 and unsportsmanlike," said Frank, pulling out of his breast 

 pocket a couple of bullets, carefully sewed up in leather " it is 

 the best plan possible, and saves lots of time you see I can 

 just shove my balls in at once, without any bother of fitting 

 patches." 



" Yes," replied Harry, " and five to one the seam, which, how- 

 ever neatly it is drawn, must leave a slight ridge, will cross the 

 direction of the grooving, and give the ball a counter movement ; 

 either destroying altogether the rotatory motion communicated 

 by the rifling, or causing it to take a direction quite out of the 

 true line ; accordingly as the counteraction is conveyed near the 

 breech, or near the muzzle of the piece." 



u Will so trifling a cause produce so powerful an effect ?'* in- 

 quired the Commodore. 



" The least variation, whether of concavity or convexity in the 

 bullet, will do so unquestionably and I cannot see why the 

 same thing in a covering superinduced to the ball should not 

 have the same effect. Even a hole in a pellet of shot, will cause 

 it to leave the charge, and fly off at a tangent. I was once 

 shooting in the fens of the Isle of Ely, and fired at a mallard 

 sixty or sixty-five yards off, with double B shot, when to my 

 great amazement a workman digging peat at about the same 

 distance from me with the bird, but at least ninety yards to the 

 right of the mallard roared out lustily that I had killed him. 

 I saw that the drake was knocked over as dead as a stone, and 

 consequently laughed at the fellow, and set it down as a cool 

 trick to extort money, not uncommon among the fen men, as 

 applied to members of the University. I had just finished load- 

 ing, and my retriever had just brought in the dead bird, which 

 was quite riddled, cut up evidently by the whole body of the 

 charge both the wings broken, one in three places, one leg 

 almost dissevered, and several shots in the neck and body when 

 up came my friend, and sure enough he was hit one pellet had 

 struck him on the cheek bone, and was imbedded in the skin. 

 Half a crown, and a lotion of whiskey not applied to the part, 

 but taken inwardly soon proved a sovereign medicine, and 

 picking out the shot with the point of a needle, I found a hole 

 in it big enough to admit a pin's head, and about the twentieth 

 part of an inch in depth. This I should think is proof enough 



