RIFLE-SHOOTING 277 



ing in a nail with a single bullet at lOO yards. Even to see 

 the head of the nail at that distance requires remarkably 

 good eyes — what Sam Weller called " a pair o' patent 

 double million magnifyin' gas microscopes of extry power." 



One of the best rifle-shots before the modern Express 

 and match rifles were known was a Mr Smith, of Stone, in 

 Staffordshire, a miller, and a keen sportsman. In a match 

 for ;^20 he hit five penny pieces in succession at 50 yards ; 

 and in the year i860, when he was an old man, obliged to 

 wear spectacles, I saw him smash seven oyster-shells in 

 succession at 100 yards. And he was just as good with 

 a fowling-piece. He shot partridges with a double-barrel 

 of i8-bore, and seldom failed to drop his right and left 

 stone-dead. 



But I suppose the late Captain Horatio Ross was the 

 best all-round shot we have ever seen in this country. He 

 had no superior as a pigeon and game shot, and no equal 

 as a pistol or rifle shot. Take two instances. In 1820 he 

 won the Red House Club Cup by killing 76 birds out of 

 80, 30 yards rise, 5 traps ; three more hit the top of the 

 palings and counted as misses, but fell within the grounds. 

 One got over the palings owing to his right barrel missing 

 fire, but was feathered with the left. Shooting against 

 Lord Macdonald, in 1841, he killed 52 pigeons in 53 shots 

 at 35 yards rise. In a pistol match against a Spanish 

 gentleman, the Captain hit the small bull's-eye, which was 

 exactly the size of a sixpence, 23 times out of 25 shots, at 

 12 yards, the then favourite duelling distance. 



When rifle-shooting came into vogue, Ross was upwards 

 of sixty years of age, and, although he had had plenty of 

 deer-stalking, had not shot at targets for more than five- 

 and-twenty years. Yet at Wimbledon he carried off" the 

 three great small-bore prizes at long ranges — the Association 

 Cup, the Any Rifle Wimbledon Cup, and the Duke of 

 Cambridge's — for which all the crack shots of the day 

 competed. When he was in his sixty-sixth year he wrote 

 to a friend : " I have begun my training for the rifle 

 season ; I am shooting wonderfully well, all things con- 

 sidered. Last week I tried the very long distance of i lOO 

 yards, and made a better score than is often made at that 



