Manvat OF | NSTRU CTION, 

CHAPTER I. 
IMPLEMENTS FOR COLLECTING, AND THEIR USE. 
§1. THE DOUBLE-BARRELLED SHOT GUN is your main reliance. 
Under some circumstances you may trap or snare birds, catch 
them with bird-lime, or use other devices; but such cases 
are exceptions to the rule that you will shoot birds, and for 
this purpose no weapon compares with the one just mentioned. 
The soul of good advice respecting the selection of a gun, is, 
get the best one you can afford to buy; go the full length of your 
purse in the matters of material and workmanship. To say 
nothing of the prime requisite, safety, or of the next most 
desirable quality, efficiency, the durability of a high-priced 
gun makes it cheapest in the end. Style of finish is obviously 
of little consequence, except as an index of other qualities ; 
for inferior guns rarely, if ever, display the exquisite appoint- 
ments that mark a first-rate arm. There is really, so little 
choice among good guns that nothing need be said on this 
score ; you cannot miss it if you pay enough to any reputable 
maker or reliable dealer. But collecting is a specialty, and 
some guns are better adapted than others to your particular 
purpose, which is the destruction, as a rule, of small birds, at 
moderate range, with the least possible injury-to their plumage. 
Probably three-fourths or more of the birds of a miscellaneous 
collection average under the size of a pigeon, and were shot 
within thirty yards. <A heavy gun is therefore unnecessary, in 
fact ineligible, the extra weight being useless. You will find 
a gunof 73 to 8 pounds weight most suitable. For similar 
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