BULLETS AND THEIR BILLETS 



the powerful nervous excitation due to 

 finding game after days of tense expec- 

 tation, sets up a rush of efferent activity 

 which cannot be stayed or controlled. As 

 a blow leads to a blow without interval 

 of conscious thought, so the sudden 

 stimulus sends rifle to shoulder, and 

 finger to trigger, without that moment 

 of deliberation upon which success de- 

 pends. In every game of skill there is 

 perhaps an instant and a situation ana- 

 logous to this experience, and the cure 

 lies in some appropriate inhibition (in 

 golf, "slow back"), but the lesson is 

 difficult to learn. 



It has always seemed an interesting 

 thing, that the woodsman who hears the 

 reports of a rifle in the distance, seldom 

 errs in his conclusion as to whether the 

 shots have been successful. When they 

 follow one another rapidly, the comment 

 will be "JZ a mal tire," but where a rea- 

 sonable time elapses between them he 

 will say "III' a tue, il a bien tire." Ex- 



183 



