PAPEII not being stiff enough, hat dirty, card too 

 thin, and leather apt to soften with the heat of the 

 barrel, the common, and, perhaps, the best punched 

 wadding is pasteboard. The larger the bore, the 

 thicker should be the wadding. 



All this attention, however, is only required in 

 covering the powder; as (except in double guns, where 

 the charge of one barrel has to encounter the explosion 

 of the other) it would be better to wad the shot with 

 common card, or even paper, knowing that much re- 

 sistance on that does more harm than good. 



Common cartridges are bad, as they do not keep the 

 powder sufficiently air-tight, like the proper wadding ; 

 add to which they sometimes fly unbroken, and can 

 never be depended on. I should therefore make use 

 of them only when I wanted to load in a great hurry. 

 I have a friend, however, an old sportsman, who would, 

 for many years, never even hear of any other mode of 

 loading. He was at last persuaded, by a gentleman in 

 Dorsetshire, as good a shot, and as good a judge of a 

 gun, as any man living, to try some experiments, which 

 he readily agreed to do, from a confidence of making 

 good his argument in favour of cartridges. What the 

 particulars of this trial were, I do not exactly remember; 



