86 DETONATING SYSTEM. 



to coincide with all the panegyrics that are written, by 

 keen young sportsmen who happen, perhaps, to have 

 been shooting extremely well, and despatch their bul- 

 letins on the spur of the moment, w r ould be to overrate 

 the detonater, and to underrate the flint, and therefore 

 not giving a fair and disinterested opinion. 



Why it becomes a question whether a good shot ought 

 to fly to a detonater or not is this : After he has been 

 using one for a season, or even a few weeks' shooting, 

 he will, on taking up his flint-gun again, find that it 

 goes comparatively so slow, after the other, that it will 

 appear to hang fire ; and, very probably, so puzzle and 

 disconcert him, that perhaps his best and favourite gun 

 is either packed up for the pawnbroker, or stripped of 

 its flint-appendages, and metamorphosed into a de- 

 tonater. And the whole armoury, if he has many guns, 

 is considered as mere lumber, unless altered, or ex- 

 changed for guns on the detonating system. He there- 

 fore takes to fulminating powder, like a wife, " for 

 better for worse," and this is one of the chief reasons 

 why the percussion plan has so rapidly superseded the 

 flint. Did both go equally quick, I am inclined to 

 think the flint would have held the majority. If a 

 sportsman, who has no money to throw away, has been 

 accommodated with the loan of a detonater, the only 

 way for him to back out of it, is to modulate as it were 

 into his flint-gun again, by using the slowest old 

 musket he can lay hands on, and then taking, after 

 that, his best flint-gun. 



Before dismissing this subject, I must just name one 

 circumstance : While I was using nothing but de- 

 tonating guns for four seasons, it was the remark of 



