126 MANUAL FOE YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 



What is lost of elegance in appearance, in this mode, 

 will be more than overbalanced, whatever the gunmakers 

 may say to the contrary, in precision of fire. 



And with these brief remarks on the rifle, and the 

 mode of choosing it, I shall pass, with no farther pause, 

 to the consideration of the modus operandi — the how to 

 use the gun of whatever kind in the field ; how to learn 

 to shoot deliberately, accurately and correctly as to prin- 

 ciples ; how to kill on the wing, or at full speed, with loose 

 shot, and how at rest, or in rapid motion with the single 

 ball. 



This, after all, is the whole that I can attempt by pre- 

 cept. Some men take to shooting almost by instinct, as a 

 thoroughbred setter does to pointing and backing, de race, 

 as the French have it, by the accident of birth ; others 

 cannot by any toil of practice or amount of indoctrination 

 be tutored into acquiring it. The eye, the finger, the 

 nerve, the temper, have all something, more or less, to do 

 with-it; and, no more than a poet, do I believe that a 

 crack shot can be made, save by the special ordinance of 

 nature. 



Still if one cannot be made a poet, he can at least be 

 taught the difference between blank verse and rhyme, 

 between Milton's Lycidas and Christy's " Old Uncle 

 Ned;" and, if he can never be brought to cut down his 

 twenty consecutive shots, clean and quick in close covert, 

 with the sang f void of an artist, he can, at least, be taught 

 to fire his gun off without killing himself, his neighbor, or 

 his dog ; and, unless he be the clumsiest and slowest of 

 the human kind, to kill a fair proportion of his shots 



