308 THE STILL-HUNTER. 



If you will experiment with your finger raised in line 

 with some object you will find, by opening and shut- 

 ting each eye alternately, that only one eye is used 

 in thus aligning your finger. This will generally be 

 the right one. But you will find by further experi- 

 ment that you can soon train the left one to do the 

 same thing. And you will find the proof conclusive 

 that the brain can attend to the report or nerve of 

 one eye as well as the report of both. It can 

 concentrate its attention upon the picture produced 

 upon the retina of one eye alone and be quite blind 

 to the picture upon the retina of the other. This it 

 will readily do in case of the eye we are most accus- 

 tomed to use, but it can be trained to do the same 

 thing with the other. The consequence may be that 

 when the gun is raised the eye that is in line with the 

 sights may receive the most attention from the brain, 

 and the other one may be pretty much ignored. If 

 you will fire a rifle alternately from each shoulder a 

 few times, sighting always with both eyes open, you 

 will be apt to conclude that such is the case, and that 

 binocular or two-eyed shooting is a delusion. Such, 

 I think, is the case after a thorough trial of it. It is 

 just as good as one-eyed shooting, but no better, and 

 nothing can be accomplished by it with the rifle that 

 cannot be done with one eye. For shot-gun shooting 

 it has a few slight advantages, but for the rifle it has 

 none; and I cannot, on crossing shots, estimate so well 

 the distance to hold ahead of game as when using 

 one eye. Sufficient practice would probably make 

 two eyes just as good for this purpose as one eye. 



There are some other rules given by many good 

 hunters for shooting a running deer, two of which are 

 maintained by so respectable a number of good shots 



