44 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
shooting with guns six feet long, weighing twelve or four- 
teen pounds. 
But a much farther compromise is necessary, and it is 
now pretty generally conceded that the best and most 
useful gun, applicable to all kinds of shooting, and service- 
able in all, is one of fourteen gauge thirty-one inch bar- 
rel, and 7} to eight lbs. weight. Such a gun will carry 
a charge of 14 ounce of shot to about 34 drachms of 
powder, which is in the ratio of measure for measure, or 
seven to one by weight, and do its work well, regularly, 
evenly and effectively at forty yards—dispersing its shot, 
at that distance, over a circle of thirty inches diameter, 
so evenly that, supposing No. 8 shot to be used, no wood- 
cock, quail, or single snipe shall be within that circle un- 
pierced by one or more pellets—or, if larger shot be used, 
no ruffed grouse, prairie-fowl, or wild duck. 
I do not intend, by any means, to indicate forty yards 
as the extreme distance at which such a gun will do its 
work fatally, but only as the distance at which it ought 
invariably to do it, killing every bird clean, if it be held 
so straight as to bring the bird aimed at within the circle. 
Beyond this it will often, I may say constantly, kill some 
shots at fifty, some fewer at sixty, and now and then one 
at seventy yards; moreover, such a gun will carry, when 
required, an ounce and three-quarters or two ounces of 
No. 1 or 2 shot, with 33 drachms of powder, with great 
force and effect; it being remembered, that when wa 
estimate by filling a measure of one capacity with pellets 
of different sizes, the measure of No. 10 shot being almost 
solid, will weigh at least one-third more than the same 
