80 MANUAL FOR YOUNG SPORTSMEN. 
judges, several guns the work of responsible makers, and 
in the hands of dealers on whose faith he can rely; and 
from among these to have selected some two or three, 
which he has ascertained, by testing them according to the 
instructions on pp. 46, 47, to suit him, as to weight, curva- 
ture of stock and trigger-pull—the last can be altered, if 
too hard, by the touch of a file. He should now proceed to 
try them by firing them in the open air, with a full charge 
of powder and shot, as prescribed before, at a distance of 
forty yards. The mark should be twenty-four sheets of 
thick tarred brown paper, large enough to contain an inte- 
rior circle of thirty inches diameter. 
Into this circle the gun ought to put its whole charge 
point-blank; I mean without more elevation than that 
given by the rib. The shot ought to be dispersed evenly, 
not strewed here in clusters of a dozen or more close to- 
gether, and there with spaces of several inches intervening. 
A gun doing the first may be depended upon for killing, if 
held straight. With one planting its charge, as the second, 
it is hit or miss by luck. Ifa small part only of the 
charge is lodged in the mark at that range, and those wide 
apart and much dispersed, the gun scatters too widely, and 
consequently shoots weakly ; discard it, therefore, on the 
instant. 
If, on the contrary—but that will very rarely happen, 
at forty yards—the charge should be much, though evenly 
concentrated, in the centre of the mark, especially if it 
have put a great proportion of all its pellets through all 
the 24 sheets of paper, the gun is a wonder. 
It is possible it may shoot too closely, that is, may tear 
