144 MANUAL FOB YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



quick eyesight, quick wits, and quick hands, he must be, 

 if he obey orders, beyond the possibility of failure. 



If he be unusually stout of nerve, cool of temper, 

 rapid of sight, sure of observation, and apt of hand, he 

 will probably become as successful as a marksman and a 

 shot, as he would at any thing else to which he should 

 turn his superior faculties. 



If, however, he be purblind, a blinker, clumsy and 

 helpless with his hands, dull-witted, weak-nerved, timid 

 and a dolt; I should strongly urge it on him and his 

 friends, that he should let the gun alone, for he is never 

 like to do much with it, unless it be to shoot his friend, 

 his sweetheart, or himself none of which are the legiti- 

 mate, though I am sorry to say they are but too frequently 

 the casual, ends of amateur gunnery. 



For learning to shoot with the rifle, a mode of prac- 

 tice must be adopted almost diametrically opposite to 

 that prescribed above. 



The charge of a shot gun, expanding in width in pro- 

 portion as it increases its distance from the muzzle of the 

 piece when it is charged, will cover, at forty paces from a 

 strong, well-shooting gun, a circle of a yard in diameter, 

 with its pellets so regularly distributed, that any * bird 

 found within that circle must receive two or three missiles, 

 and sent so strongly that any one of these must break a 

 pinion bone. At sixty paces the circumference of the shot 

 will be greatly enlarged and the force nearly as greatly 

 diminished ; still a good gun ought to kill a bird to a cer- 

 tainty in the centre of the circle, and generally any where 

 within it. 



