i 2 8 A BIRD COLLECTOR'S MEDLEY. 



CHAPTER XXV. 



UNUSUAL SHOTS. 



THE reader who, on seeing this title, has resigned himself to some 

 tall stories on the subject of long-distance shots can rest assured that 

 he will escape them. I, too, have heard the yarn of the sportsman who, 

 firing at a Partridge across a river, killed also a trout which rose at that 

 moment, and then, in amazement at his exploit, staggered backwards and 

 sat down upon a hare ! I have also heard of a veteran shooter's six hundred 

 odd Starlings killed at a single discharge, and who am I that I should 

 seek to measure swords with these leviathans ? A collector, moreover, has 

 a soul above such details as the number of yards at which he bagged his 

 specimen ; it is enough for him that he has got, or missed, his bird. 



Still, I have seen strange shots made with guns in my time; yes, and 

 with other implements than guns, for the first unusual shot that I remember 

 was made, not with a gun, but with a catapult, and it was as unpleasant 

 as it was unusual. I had started a theory that it would be possible to shoot 

 more accurately no minor consideration with a catapult if we held the 

 fork much more forward instead of straight up. Full of zeal for my invention, 

 and anxious to prove its excellence, I rushed into the garden to test my 

 theory on the first Sparrow that came my way. I returned with equal 

 precipitation, bawling for boracic-lint and a bandage. The shot in its eager- 

 ness to reach the victim had taken a short cut through the top of my 

 thumb, and left a long smooth furrow behind it. 



Our catapults had not long yielded to the superior destructive power 

 of a "410 collector's gun, when, one soft summer's evening, just as it was 

 turning dusk, I espied from my bedroom window the substantial form of a 

 Brown Owl, seated placidly on one of the chimneys of a neighbour's house 

 in Winchester. A raptorial bird just across the road, and we the possessors 

 of a genuine gun ! Flesh and blood could not have resisted. Out came 

 the weapon ; for a moment it rested on the window-bar, and then a roar 

 as of thunder echoed through every cranny of the Cathedral Close. Out 

 rushed a footman from one house, a cook and two housemaids from the 



