38 
HIGH PHEASANTS : 
I may mention that a grouse as easily outstrips a partridge 
in flight as does a pheasant. 
It is curious to record that among the fifty or sixty 
exceptionally high pheasants shot by myself, or by my friends, 
which I have had through my hands for examination during 
the last few years, at least twenty of them were actually killed 
by the shock caused through their violently striking the 
ground when falling from a great height. 
They were all examined and reported on by various expert 
taxidermists, and it was proved that a considerable percentage 
of the birds which were seen to crumple up in the air, as if 
killed at that moment, were only stunned by pellets which had 
partially flattened against the bone of the head, but had not 
penetrated, the real cause of death being the smash up of the 
chief organs of the bird by its contact with the ground. 
A pheasant struck by the shot in the same way as many of 
these very high ones were, would have presently recovered, and 
either flown away or run like a hare, if it could have been 
gently placed on the ground, instead of falling on it and 
then rebounding like a heavy stone.i 
The Influence of Gravitation in Relation to a Game- gun. 
In theory, gravitation is not supposed to influence a charge 
of shot when fired perpendicularly, more than when it is fired 
horizontally, the central attraction of the earth being the same 
in both cases. Nor if shot is fired from, let us say, a balloon, 
and straight down towards the earth, does gravitation ap- 
preciably assist its pace of flight, for the shot travels much 
^ The position and effect of the shot-pellets that struck a score of these high 
birds will be described in the next chapter. 
