Of all the engines that were ever produced by human genius, 

 not one has experienced a greater variety, or more improve- 

 ments that the gun. It is asserted that Edward, the Black 

 Prince, was the first who introduced great guns or cannon, at 

 least into England ; but this is doubtful. 



There perhaps is nothing, says a brother sportsman, in which 

 persons have more faith, than in the excellence of their own 

 gun. The distance it kills, and the closeness of its throwing 

 the shot, are inconceivable ; striking a card with ten or twenty 

 pellets of shot at sixty yards is nothing uncommon, and the 

 merits of the shooter and his gun bid defiance to rivalship. It 

 is no easy matter to change the opinion of such persons respect- 

 ing their guns ; but when a gun is said to be sure at three or 

 fourscore yards, the measure may be safely asserted to be of the 

 proprietor's own making. The circumstance of knocking down 

 a partridge at eighty yards may happen, but very few barrels, of 

 those that are generally used for the shooting of birds on wing, 

 will throw shot compact enough to be certain of killing at sixty 

 yards : one or two grains of shot are not sufficient so to strike a 

 bird as to bring it to the ground ; for when stript of its feathers 

 a partridge is a much smaller object than it appears to be, and 

 possesses many parts not vital. It is the weight of iron properly 

 disposed in a barrel that can alone produce such an effect,* and 



* So well apprised are the best gun makers of this, that they now 

 recommend a weight of metal in the barrel, which a very few years since 

 they used to denounce as a needless incumbrance. 

 N3 



