The Guns, with which our grandfathers shot, were vastly inferior to our modern breechloader; the workmanship was good, but the flint-lock, with its tardy firing, and the very weak powder then in use, did not render the “birding gun” a very efficient weapon. [Illustration: COCK SHOOTING WITH SPANIELS—1804.] Thornhill, who wrote the _Shooting Directory_ in 1804, is as great an authority on the subject of guns as any of his contemporaries; and he had quite sense enough to see that the old-fashioned long barrel of four feet, or more, carried no further than one of three feet, and he counselled the musket length of two feet ten inches, as the standard length for fowling-piece barrels, and preferred one that carried its shot close, to one that scattered. The method of proving “that a barrel will not burst, was to get a ball to fit the exact bore, and put the exact weight of the ball in powder, with which load, and fire it off by a train; if it does not burst, you need be under no apprehension. This is called _Tower-proof_; or put in double the quantity of powder and shot.” He recommends as a proper charge for a fowling-piece of ordinary calibre, a drachm and a quarter, or a drachm and a half, of good powder, and an ounce, or an ounce and a quarter, of shot; and, when treating on the subject of recoil, he gives one or two anecdotes of overloading. “The overloading of the piece is the reason of the recoil; respecting sportsmen who are in the habit of overloading with shot, such are properly ridiculed in a treatise published some time since, entitled, ‘Cautions to Young Sportsmen,’ in which we find an advertisement levelled at some persons who were going to a Pigeon Shooting Match at _Ballingbear-Warren House_. It was as follows: ‘Take notice, that no person will be allowed to load with more than four ounces of shot.’ A gamekeeper to whom this author mentioned the story, told him he thought it a pretty fair allowance, and, on being told what charge and weight of shot he generally used, replied, he divided a pound into five charges.... A friend of the gentleman who relates this story, seeing his keeper equipped for a pigeon match, had the curiosity to examine his charge, and, after trying it with his rammer, expressed his surprise at finding it rather less than usual. ‘Oh, sir,’ replied the keeper, ‘I have only put in the powder yet;’ and, on putting in the shot, the charge, altogether, was _eleven_ fingers. The reason he assigned was ‘that he always liked to give his piece a belly full.’”