Introduction. 1 1 



of deer and observe their habits than to stalk within range 

 for a pot shot. These men, who would hunt with the camera, 

 and prefer to bring back a good negative showing large 

 game sporting in native haunts, rather than an elephant's 

 tail or a tiger's skin, have no sympathy with the sportsmen 

 whose only object is to kill, and who by dissociating 

 themselves from woodcraft and its attractions, have killed 

 their desire for sport, and require only to glut their craving 

 for blood or win approbation for their marksmanship. 



Thus it seems probable that, for the purposes of sport as 

 for the purposes of war, the hand firearm is rapidly reaching 

 the close of its day. To those to whom the literature of 

 field sports written half a century ago is familiar, it will 

 seem impossible that the enthusiasm can have died out ; and 

 to those to whom the rifleman of the fifties was the hero 

 and saviour the hysterical writing of those times proclaimed 

 him, it would never occur that the man with the gun is to 

 be of quite secondary importance in the wars of the future. 

 It would be idle to argue that shooting will not long con- 

 tinue as a sport with some classes, and that the infantry 

 man will not again do excellent service in guerilla warfare ; 

 but the contention deduced from contemporary literature, 

 and not now advanced for the first time, is that the hand 

 firearm, both for purposes of sport and as a military 

 weapon, will not, in the early future, be regarded as pos- 

 sessing the importance attributed to it in the recent past. 

 The delight of sports afield will be more keenly enjoyed by 

 the man in closer harmony with nature than the modern 

 skilled wing shot ; and, in the event of war occurring 

 between civilised nations, the machine gun and an endless 

 variety of automatically acting mechanical contrivances to 

 insure the defence of the party attacked will have superseded 

 the infantry man. 



But firearms, both sporting and military, at present 



