AD VANJ'A GES OF OLD- FASHIONED G UNS 1 9 1 



Somehow or other I always preferred shooting- snipe, 

 and could kill them better, too, with the guns which 

 were used formerly than with the more modern im- 

 proved ones ; but whether using hammer or hammer- 

 less guns, I could never make a decent average on 

 snipe by using large charges of powder. As regards 

 hammer guns, I can but repeat what I asserted in the 

 Field some years ago, that the hammers are most 

 useful as a guide, and particularly "o in aligning one's 

 barrels on snipe. They serve to show at once if the 

 rib is level — a most important point when snipe- 

 shooting, which latter sport requires the greatest 

 nicety. Nearly all left-barrel shots are long ones, and 

 therefore a very slight error in aim is fatal to success 

 on so small a bird as a snipe, and carelessness often 

 causes an unsatisfactory, fiuky style of shooting, which 

 frequently tends to produce a general feeling of un- 

 happiness and demoralization, and to spoil what would 

 otherwise have been a pleasurable day's sport. 



The best gun I ever owned for snipe-shooting was 

 a Joe Manton, which weighed just under 7 lb., a 16 

 bore ; and in those days I never used more than 2^ 

 drachms of Pigou and Wilks' fine-grain powder. The 

 latter came well up into the nipples of the gun, and I 

 but very rarely experienced a missfire with it, unless 

 both I and my gun chanced to get bogged, or some 

 such contretemps occurred. I have at the present 

 time a muzzle-loader, made by Dickson, of Edinburgh, 

 in 1858, and this is a far better gun for snipe-shooting 

 than any breechloader I ever saw. I cannot but think 

 that the fact of the breech being narrower and the 

 hammers serving as a guide to the eye, and their 

 leading to the rib, which rises full and prominently, has 



