POWDER AND SHOT. 421 



will soon discover if a gun shoot high or low, hard 

 or soft, and learn to vary the load according. Long 

 shots are mere chances, and nothing can be judged 

 by them. If it happen, when land-shooting, that a 

 partridge drop at eighty yards by a lucky grain in 

 the eye, with a shoulder-gun, that is no proof of its 

 shooting, or even of good aim. So, in fowling, it is 

 through firing at a reasonable distance a gun must 

 be judged, and not by chance performances at a 

 hundred yards or more.* 



Powder. The coarsest that is sold for duck- 

 shooting. There are two or three kinds Colonel 

 Hawker's, Captain Latour's,f &c. ; one is as good as 

 another, provided it is fresh and dry, and leaves no 

 wet inky moisture after firing. It is easy enough 

 to dry powder without putting it within yards of 

 the fire, by spreading it out on hot plates. If a well- 

 cleaned, thin, and warm wine-glass is inverted over 

 the powder when first placed on a hot dish, it will 

 dull the glass should it be damp. As to wadding, 

 nothing answers like soft, fresh oakum ; all the cut 

 and punched wads ever invented cannot equal it for 

 toughness and spring. Punched wads are always 

 liable to turn in a large barrel, why I can't say. I 

 only know they do. The right thing is a hard oval 



* I have heard many a shooter declare that a certain gun he 

 possessed was a wonderful killer, as it had at rare intervals stopped 

 a hare or bird at near eighty yards. Never was greater mistake 

 than to judge a gun by chance shooting. Were such performances 

 other than pure accidents (perhaps caused by a single pellet through 

 the brain), Mr. Longshot would succeed in doing regularly what he so 

 constantly endeavours to do without success. 



t Captain Latour was in days gone by a very successful fowler 

 with the swivel-gun, and it is told of him that he once obtained near 

 a hundred wild geese at a shot on the coast of Scotland. 



