BEST GUN FOR SHORE-SHOOTING. 



AN American gentleman writes to me, " What is the 

 best gun for the above purpose, as well as flight- 

 shooting ? as the use of punt, swivel, or stanchion 

 guns have been interdicted upon the Chesapeake and 

 all adjoining waters, and nothing can be employed 

 against fowl that cannot be shot from the shoulder." 

 The information here required would, doubtless, be 

 interesting to some of our home sportsmen, more 

 especially if we could get our Parliament to prohibit 

 the use upon our coast of those small-bore cannon, 

 that do an enormous amount of damage and injury 

 to the true sportsmen's pleasure, and only gratify the 

 love of adventure of a few gentlemen, or afford a 

 scant living to a moiety of those dwellers upon the 

 coast, whose time could assuredly be much better and 

 more profitably occupied. My reason for writing in 

 such strong terms against the use of stanchion guns is, 

 that upon our ocean frontage, the limited amount of 

 wildfowl that visit it annually, are so harassed by 

 these abominable weapons that they dare not during 

 daylight approach their sea-feeding grounds below 

 tide mark, much less come further on to land-locked 

 waters. Thus night is the only time that they can 

 be pursued, and then only with those mammoth 

 machine guns, destroying entirely any chance that 

 the ordinary sportsman has of adding occasionally a 

 few of these valuable birds to his bag, whether his 

 beat be along the sea's margin, over bogs and fens, 

 or by river banks. The coast of the United States 



