TEE AGRICULTURAL JOURNAL. 521 



My Old Gun. 



By "Hippias." 



THOUGH familar with the use of a gun 

 from very early days I was never 

 more than an indifferent shot. Indeed, a 

 serious defect in the organ of sight, caused 

 by convulsions thiring the process of 

 teething, threatened at one time to in- 

 capacitate me for all outdoor pursuits. I 

 was afflicted with a very decided squint, 

 which, after the most eminent oculist 

 of the day had been consulted in vain, 

 yielded to a simple but till then undis- 

 covered remedy — that of severing the 

 contracted muscles, and allowing the 

 eyeball to recover its normal position. I 

 cannot, even now, recall the operation 

 without a shudder ; though, indeed, it 

 was more alarming in prospect t-han 

 actually painful. But after the second 

 operation (for both eyes could not be 

 treated at once, and a considerable inter- 

 val was deemed necessary), I lost patience 

 at the confinement, and finding the house 

 deserted one fine afternoon, took rod, 

 reel, and flies, and soon found myself at 

 Sarsgrove pond, with a soft breeze blow- 

 ing and the trout jumping like a schule 

 of mackerel. Noticing one bigger than 

 the rest beyond casting distance, and, 

 boy-like, forgetting all about the eyes, I 

 waded in, caught the big ti out, and for 

 the next twenty minutes or so, had a good 

 time ; when my father appeared on the 

 scene, alarmed and angry, and lamenting 

 that a son of his could be such a fool. 

 He was quite right, for next morning I 

 had a dozen leeches on my face and fore- 

 head, and it ended in a third trip to 

 London, when the granulations, which 

 had formed in the corner of the eye, were 

 cut out with scissors, and a very nasty job 

 it was. The cure, however, was at last com- 

 plete, and the strabismus vanished ; but 

 there has always remained this peculiarity 

 — that the eyes have never acted in con- 

 cert, but have performed separate func- 

 tions, one, that of close sight, of which 

 reading is the chief instance ; the other, 

 that of looking at distant objects, though 

 the distance is, of course, limited, in com- 

 parison with the range of unimpaired 

 vision. Perhaps, for this very reason, 

 doing single instead of double duty, my 

 yes have hitherto retained their powers 



undimmed by age ; and though very 

 small print is a grave obstacle, no ordin- 

 ary book presents any difficulty, and the 

 habit of reading in bed, contracted at 

 Winchester, is still continued without 

 any ill results. 



Many a vulgus, as the daily task of 

 three couplets of alternate hexameters 

 and pentameters "was called, have I 

 worked off on my pillow, the tallow 

 candle flaring on the shelf set against the 

 wooden curtain of the old college bed- 

 stead, and the extinguisher standing 

 ready for the sound of the Doctor's or 

 Ridding's master-key, for the detection of 

 a light after 9 p.m., other than the "func- 

 ture " (a rushlight burning in an iron 

 sconce against the chimney) was invari- 

 ably followed by a " scrubbing" or four 

 strokes with the rod, at the conclusion of 

 morning school. As this rod consisted (I 

 quote Mansfield's School Life at Win- 

 chester College ") " of a wooden handle 

 with four grooves at one end, into which 

 were inserted four apple or birch twigs, 

 branching off from the handle at such an 

 angle that not more than one could touch 

 the space of skin exposed — about a hand's 

 breadth of the small of the back," the 

 reader may conclude that the punishment 

 was not much dreaded, and was gener- 

 ally preferred to the alternative of au im- 

 positioi} — 30 lines of Virgil, English, and 

 Latin — which kept the victim in school 

 and forbad the delights of fives or foot- 

 ball. With regard to the rod, it was in- 

 vented by Warden Baker somewhere 

 about 1460, and is mentioned in a Latin 

 poem by Christopher Johnson, who was 

 headmaster from 1560 to 1571, and of 

 whom Anthony Wood speaks as " a most 

 excellent Latin Poet, Philosopher and 

 Physician of his time " in a single line so 

 graphic that I cannot help quoting it : — 



Qui quadri partita bene corrigit omnia virga 



But this is a digression. I shall never 

 forget the day on which I first discovered 

 the peculiarity of vision which I have de- 

 scribed above. We were shooting Church- 

 hill Heath, an outlying cover on my 

 uncle's estate. I was with the dogs and 

 beaters, and we had just reached a planta- 



