THE GUN, AND HOW TO CHOOSE IT. val 
cartridges for Lang’s breech-loading double-barrels cer- 
tainly are not to be found growing on thorn bushes? Is 
he to carry with him, in heaven’s name, a hundred barrels 
of cartridges on camel-back, or mule-back, or his own 
back, with the consciousness that these indispensables, 
once used up, his double-barrel is of less use even than a 
broomstick ? 
The want of simplicity is enough to ruin any inven- 
tion; and this, it needs no prophet to foretell, must be 
inoperative, except as a pretty plaything to be used at 
home. 
The gain, moreover, J should fancy from his drawing, 
is next to nothing; and I should judge that a quick smart 
loader would recharge both his barrels by the muzzle with 
a good flask and Sykes’s patent-lever pouch, and cap them 
in the ordinary way, while his comrade is turning the crank, 
withdrawing the old cartridges, replacing the new—which 
by the way can only be done correctly under the eye, and 
hardly by touch—and bringing back the barrels to their 
place. 
The advantage in point of time can be scarcely, then, 
worthy of notice; and no gain of time is in truth requi- 
site, in the case of shot guns. They can be loaded, fired, 
reloaded and refired, in the ordinary way, quite as rapidly 
as for ordinary purposes can ever, be needed; and this 
every one knows, who has ever been present at an English 
battue, or has been obliged to sit down, as I have, a dozen 
times at least in my life, in the middle of a snipe-meadow, 
or of scattered bevies of quail, to let my barrels cool, 
before I have dared to reload them. 
