WARWICK WOODLANDS. 15'7 



"The lenst variation, whether of concavity or convexity 

 in the bullet, will do so unquestionably — and I cannot 

 see why the same thing in a covering superinduced to the 

 ball should not have the same effect. Even a hole in a 

 pellet of shot, will cause it to leave the charge, and fly off 

 at a tangent. I was once shooting in the fens of the Isle 

 of Ely, and fired at a mallard sixty or sixty-five yards off, 

 with double B shot, when to my great amazement a work- 

 man — digging peat at about the same distance from me 

 with the bird, but at least ninety yards to the right of the 

 mallard — roared out lustily that I had killed him. I 

 saw that the drake was knocked over as dead as a stone, 

 and consequently laughed at the fellow, and set it down 

 as a cool trick to extort money, not uncommon among 

 the fen men, as applied to members of the University. T 

 had just finished loading, and my retriever had just 

 brought in the dead bird, which was quite riddled, cut up 

 evidently by the whole body of the charge — both the wings 

 broken, one in three places, one leg almost dissevered, and 

 several shots in the neck and body — when up came my 

 friend, and sure enough he was hit — one pellet had 

 struck him on the cheek bone, and was imbedded in the 

 skin. Half a crown, and a lotion of whiskey — not applied 

 to the part, but taken inwardly — soon proved a sovereign 

 medicine, and picking out the shot with the point of a 

 needle, I found a hole in it big enough to admit a pin's 

 head, and about the twentieth part of an inch in depth. 

 This I should think is proof enough for you — but, besides 

 this, I have seen bullets in pistol-shooting play strange 

 vagaries, glancing off from the target at all sorts of 

 queer angles." 



"Well! well!" replied Frank, my rifle shoots true 

 enough for me — true enough to kill generally — and who 

 the deuce can be at the bother of your pragmatical prep- 

 arations! I am :5ure it might be said of you, as it was of 

 James the First, of most pacific and pedantic memory, 

 that you are 'Captain of arts and Clerk of arms' — at least 

 you are very pedant in gunnery." 



"No! no!" said A ; "you're wrong there altogether. 



Master Forester; there is nothing on earth that makes so 

 great a difference in sportsmanship as the observation of 

 small things. I don't call him a sportsman who can walk 



