38 GUN, RIFLE, AND HOUND. 



borrowed rifle and missing six or seven consecutive 

 rabbits. I then put a mark on a wall and fired at 

 that. This showed me the sighting was all wrong, 

 but consistently so, every shot going five inches over 

 the mark. I then recommenced, aiming below every 

 rabbit (or at the hind quarters if they were sitting up), 

 and did not miss another. How well do I remember 

 my wrath once on firing five shots lying down with- 

 out being able even to frighten the rabbit I was 

 firing at. The target test revealed the shooting of 

 the rifle to be utterly unreliable, the grooves being 

 quite leaded up. Finally, it may not be superfluous 

 to add that in thickly populated countries, like England, 

 all rifle-shooting should be practised with the greatest 

 caution. 



Although the rabbit is generally only looked upon 

 as a useful contribution to the bag at an all-round 

 covert shoot, there are some places where he is alone, 

 or principally, the object of the guns' attention. Of 

 such Rhiwlas, in North Wales, was long considered 

 the chief. It has, however, been recently (in 1892) 

 eclipsed by an English estate which yielded over seven 

 thousand rabbits to the gun. 



A number of ingenious methods for making rabbits 

 "lie out" were given in The Field* in the year 1891. 

 The simplest method, and that most usually practised, 

 is merely to ferret all the burrows, and having ejected 

 all the inhabitants, to block them out by placing 

 in the mouth of each hole a split stick, holding a piece 

 of white paper, which has been saturated with 

 * " Letters to Young Shooters." 



