Popular Science Monthly 



865 



Aiding the One- Eyed 



Shooter to Sight 



Accurately 



THE middle aged man, 

 accustomed all his life 

 to shoot from one shoulder, 

 can learn to shoot from the 

 other shoulder just about as 

 easily as he can learn to 

 write with his left hand. 

 But, while men who have lost 

 the use of the right hand learn 

 to write with the other hand 

 because they have to, most 

 men, having to change shoul- 

 ders, stop shooting instead. 



The eye directly back of 

 the gun-rib is the guiding eye. 

 If that is lost or injured, and 

 the left eye put in command 

 of the gun shot from the right shoulder, 

 then the gun shoots neatly to the left of 

 everything fired at. Unfortunately the eye 

 back of the gun is the one to be injured if 

 anything happens in the way of blow-ups 

 or blow-backs. In sidling around the 

 difficulty created by an injured right eye, 

 it has been the practice to make a cross- 

 eyed stock, with a lateral bend in it, so 

 that the gun, held at the right shoulder, 

 will line its barrels up before the left eye. 

 This is clumsy and costly, and usually 

 altogether ineffective. 



Finally an American 

 trapshooter, H. W. 

 Cadwallader, a profes- 

 sional in the employ of 

 a big cartridge com- 

 pany, found the obvi- 

 ous remedy. He 

 evolved an ofT-set rib 

 which is attached to 

 the shotgun barrel and 

 which is set off to the 

 left just far enough to 

 line up before the left 

 or guiding eye with the 

 gun at the other shoul- 

 der. The sole difference 

 is that the pattern of the 

 gun, some three feet across 

 at effective ranges, is, say, 

 two inches off-center. 



As proof of the pudding, 

 the inventor broke 96 per 

 cent of 700 clay birds fired 

 at with this off-set rib — 

 a good record for any man. 



A hedge of spiny cactus, sixteen feet high in some places and 

 five feet thick, keeps out thieves and makes an attractive wall 



Keeping Out Fruit Thieves with a 

 Fence of Spiny Cactus 



NEAR Glendale, Calif., is a fence which 

 makes a very satisfactory guard for 

 an orange and apricot grove. It is a cactus 

 fence, grown by a rancher whose fruit was 

 stolen by every one who passed along the 

 road. He planted a large number of cactus 

 shoots along his fence line. In about a 

 year a spiny hedge had grown up to a 

 height of three feet. It is now nearly six- 

 teen feet in height and from five 

 to six feet thick. 



If the barbed wire fence is 

 dreaded by ever>' thief, what 

 can be said of the cactus 

 hedge? It is practically 

 impossible to climb 

 through it. On each of 

 the cactus leaves are 

 hundreds of needle-like 

 spines. The prick of a 

 spine may pass un- 

 noticed at first, but an 

 hour later inflamma- 

 tion and pain begin. 

 During the blooming 

 season of this cactus 

 hedge, which is between 

 the first of May and the 

 last of July, the fence is 

 beautiful. The spiny buds 

 form on the edges of the 

 leaves, generally clustering 

 about the tips, and soon 

 what is known as the "cac- 

 tus apple" appears. 



The off-center device which makes 

 it possible to shoot fro' n the right 

 shoulder at effective ranges while 

 sighting with the left eye 



