vi THE COMPLETE SHOT 



beginning would involve the necessity of giving that and other 

 puerile information. Nobody would be the better for a learned 

 chapter on gun actions. In the first place, these actions are no 

 longer patents, they are open to anyone who likes to use them, 

 and consequently the days when one selected a gun-maker 

 because his patent action was conceived to be the better, are 

 long gone by. The reason is that each gun-maker can be 

 trusted to use the best principle when he has a choice of them 

 all, or at least the best available for the money to be expended 

 upon its making in the gun. Ejectors are nearly in the same 

 position ; but single triggers are not. I was so fortunate as to 

 make a discovery in regard to single triggers that is now 

 acknowledged to be of great assistance to the gun trade ; the 

 want of it had for a hundred years been the stumbling-block to 

 the patent single triggers that had begun to trouble gun-makers 

 in the time of the celebrated Colonel Thornton. That is 

 referred to in its proper chapter, because single triggers now 

 occupy the place that formerly actions held, and at a later date 

 ejector systems usurped, in assisting to the selection of a gun- 

 maker. 



To begin at the beginning in the repudiation of frequently 

 accepted fallacy possibly would not compel a reference to the 

 sometime beliefs that hares change their sex ; that skylarks 

 fall into snakes' mouths after their skyward song a statement 

 that troubled Mr. Samuel Pepys, who, as Secretary to the 

 Admiralty under two protectors and two monarchs, and as a 

 member of the Royal Society, should have been in a position to 

 get the best information. Nor would such a beginning involve 

 the repudiation of the belief once held that bernicle geese 

 turned into " bernacle " molluscs, or vice versa. But it would 

 oblige an author to enter into repudiation of the oft-stated 

 belief that nitro powder is quicker than black powder, 

 although big and heavily charged caps have to be employed 

 for the nitro, whereas the small were amply sufficient for black 

 powder. One would also be obliged to point out that the 

 oft -repeated prophecy, that the smallest stock of grouse 

 bred the better August crop, has been doomed to disaster 



