215 



distance of your object at pleasure, this will be 

 quite enough ; and when the nerves of the 

 pupil are become thoroughly familiarized and 

 at ease with this, they may be further wound 

 up to stand fire ; which it is of the last impor- 

 tance to have effected without the sympathetic 

 communication of motion to any other part of 

 the system, except the muscles connected with 

 the trigger-finger ; no, not even to the harmless 

 twinkling of an eyelid, under a full field-load. 



It ought perhaps in a more early part of these 

 pages to have been mentioned, but arrived as we 

 are at the actual shot, I must no longer omit to 

 say, that as I have heretofore taken the mecha- 

 nical disposition of the whole body under my 

 direction, some attention becomes due to the 

 management of the eye itself. Our awkward 

 acquaintance from the plough's tail screws up 

 the features of one side of his face into painful 

 deformity, in order to keep his left eye closely 

 shut, and almost dislocates his neck in bringing 

 down the other to a side-long level at the old 

 crow before him : but the sportsman, the true 

 position of whose head is to be upright and at 

 ease, and who by the methods already taught; 

 and an adapted bend of his stock, is to bring 

 the barrel to his eye, and not to risk a crick in 

 the neck by squeezing down his eye to the 



