MUZZLE-LOADERS AND BREECH-LOADERS. 59 



This is the last of Dead Shot's objections, and 

 none of them merit the attention they have received, 

 except from the fact that this book has been exten- 

 sively circulated in our country, where the merits of 

 breech-loaders are little known. The objections so 

 manifestly arise from prejudice or ignorance, that 

 they need no contradiction to any one acquainted 

 with the true state of the case, and are worthy of an 

 author who, in his opening, says : " He only can be 

 called a ' Dead Shot' who can bring down with un- 

 erring precision an October or November partridge, 

 whenever it offers a fair chance, i. e. rises within 

 certain range ;" which range he afterwards, at page 

 86, puts at forty yards, in the following words: 

 " With judicious loading and a regard to the princi- 

 ples of deadly range, a partridge may be killed with 

 certainty at forty yards." The partridge resembles, 

 in many points, our quail, and sportsmen can tell 

 whether quail can be killed " with certainty at forty 

 yards," or whether the best shot alive can kill them 

 every time at any distance. 



In discussing the merits of any new invention, 

 prejudice is one of the strongest grounds of opposi- 

 tion to overcome ; and prejudice in favor of a weapon 

 that we have tried and found trustworthy, that 

 years of service have enabled us to use skilfully and 

 have endeared to our affections, that has never, under 

 all diversities of trial, failed to merit our confidence, 

 is not merely a natural but praiseworthy feeling in 

 the human mind. Prejudice, when at last driven to 

 a corner and forced to give up as untenable the ob- 



