IN THEORY AND PRACTICE 
39 
faster by the energy of the explosion than it would fall by 
gravitation. When the shot has lost this energy it merely 
falls by the force of gravity. 
Here is, possibly, an example of this contention, and one 
that tends to show, as I have described in perpendicular target 
practice, that from 145 to 150 yds. is the limit, whether straight 
upwards or straight downwards, that a charge of No. 6 shot 
can reach before its acquired velocity is expended. 
On some steep cliffs on the Yorkshire coast, known to 
be 450 ft. high, myself and others, when staying with the 
late Lord Londesborough for partridge- driving, used to have 
one afternoon at the rock-pigeons, as they flew in to roost in the 
cliffs from the adjacent country. Our stands consisted of small 
walled inclosures built on the very verge of the cliffs ; and as the 
pigeons, often in hundreds, flew to their holes and ledges in the 
face of the cliffs, they were usually underneath us, and hence we 
often shot straight down at their backs. On the seashore near 
the base of the cliffs, and immediately below us, a dozen or more 
men were placed to keep the pigeons on the move by firing 
guns, as well as to gather the birds we killed. 
The first time I visited the cliffs for this most diflicult of 
all shooting, I allowed many pigeons to pass without firing at 
them, as I was afraid I might injure the men below me on 
the strand, who were frequently in a direct line with the birds. 
I, however, need have exercised no such care, as several of these 
men told me afterwards that, though they had assisted in the 
sport for many years, no one had ever suffered the least harm. 
To use their words, * the shot fell soft as rain.' 
The explanation is that when a charge of shot from a 
gun is fired straight downwards it gradually loses, through 
atmospheric resistance, nearly all its momentum before it 
