SHOT 93 



more or less a dull and unpolished surface, whereas 

 the flat side, or face, produced by friction is usually 

 fairly smooth and bright. Moreover, in the latter case 

 and in the worst instances, from a quarter to a third 

 of the pellet may have been thus worn away. 



It must be patent to most people that excessive 

 disfiguration of the pellets within the gun-barrel, from 

 whatever cause arising, must militate greatly against 

 the effectiveness and range of the charge. It will do 

 this in two or three different ways. First, by retarda- 

 tion of flight, the malformed pellets encountering greater 

 atmospheric resistance. The smallest school-boy of all 

 is perfectly alive to the fact that a smooth round stone 

 takes a straighter course through the air and travels 

 further than an irregularly-shaped stone with jagged 

 and uneven edges. In the second place, deformed 

 pellets are liable to fly off at a tangent, and herein 

 may lurk a positive source of danger. Most people 

 with a lengthy experience of guns and shooting have 

 come across curious instances where game or, it may 

 be, dogs or men, standing well out of the line of aim, 

 have been struck by a stray pellet. One such incident 

 occurred in my own shooting not many years ago. I 

 was shooting driven partridges, and on firing my first 

 barrel at one of three or four birds coming up, and from 

 30 to 35 yards distant, I was much surprised to see a 

 bird come down several feet away from, and on the 

 extreme left of, the object of my aim. On picking it 

 up, it was found to have been shot through the head 

 by a single pellet, and was laid exactly 15 feet on one 

 side of the bird aimed at, which also was killed out- 

 right. 



This question of directness of flight has now and 



H 



