IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 
63 
dealing with guns and shooting, theory and practice do not 
agree. 
A few years since, I tested in a simple manner the question 
whether the fast and slow pellets of the shot-column could 
strike a crossing pheasant at practically the same moment ; 
or whether a proportion of them only reached the original 
position of the bird after it had fallen, or had flown forward. 
In fact, whether the slowest pellets of the column of shot trailed 
up, figuratively speaking, so that they could kill a second bird 
that had flown into the position previously occupied by one 
some yards in front of it. 
I placed a 5-ft. post in the ground and fastened a thin metal 
disc, 8 in. in diameter, at its top, and, of course, facing the 
shooter. Over the front of this fixed disc, and close to it, I 
suspended a second one exactly the same size, held in position 
by a little notched stud of steel, so arranged that the least 
pressure against the front disc, such as the contact of a few 
pellets of shot fired from a gun, released it at once and allowed 
it to fall down — its pace of fall being increased by a length of 
rubber cord stretched from a hole in its lower edge to a peg 
in the ground. Both discs were whitewashed as required. 
When shooting at 40 yds. almost as many pellets showed 
on the underneath or fixed disc as on the front one ! 
This result plainly showed that after the front disc was 
hit and had dropped clear of the fixed one behind it, the slower 
pellets of the charge came up and struck the latter. These 
slower pellets might have killed a following bird, but they 
would not have been up in time to have helped in the killing 
of the first bird, as represented by the front disc. 
As the front disc could not be set free from its catch — when 
the first few shot struck it — quite instantaneously, it received 
