The true load for a gun not exceeding eight pounds in weight, regardless of its size or bore, is one ounce and a quarter of shot and three drachms of the strongest powder, or three and a half drachms of common powder. The same proportion should be retained if the gun is heavier or the charge increased. Where more shot is used power is lost and recoil aggravated; and if the powder is not augmented one ounce of shot will do better execution than two. Many persons who have ascertained this fact and practise upon it, will inform you that they drive their shot through the birds, and consequently kill them instantly. This is a mistake; small shot are rarely, if ever, driven through a bird; but where the force is increased the blow is much harder, and stuns. It is the velocity rather than the size or number of the shot that tells. A soldier in battle was struck on the belt-plate by a spent minié bullet not a half inch in diameter, and he described himself as feeling that he had been torn to pieces, and that a cannon-ball had gone directly through his body. The size of the shot is to be proportioned to the size of the bird--weight, of course, being an element of power and telling on each individual pellet--but the more the aggregate amount can be reduced the less the recoil. Six drachms of powder and one ounce of shot, will not occasion as much recoil as three drachms of powder and an ounce and a half of shot. The gun should always be held firmly to the shoulder, and the shoulder never rested against a solid substance; indeed, the collar-bone may be broken by simply firing directly upwards. Therefore, never fire in the air while lying on your back upon the ground, and be careful when shooting at ducks from a boat not to support yourself upon the latter. If the reader still doubts the universally disastrous effects of cringing at the moment of discharge, let him have an assistant to load the gun out of sight, who without his knowledge shall vary the load, and occasionally put in none at all. Then let the reader fire at a mark, and in spite of the efforts which he will naturally make, he will find when there is no load, and consequently nothing to distract his attention, that he does shrink, and pull the muzzle somewhat off the object. This book is not written for beginners; there are plenty of works with every variety of instruction in them, and the reader is supposed to have read them, digested their contents, acquired a knowledge of the gun, and some skill in its use, and to have been frequently in the field, but to be perfect neither in the use of the gun, nor the practice of the sportsman’s art. There are, however, a few simple suggestions that may prove valuable, not only in acquiring the ability to shoot, but in restoring it where, from want of practice, it has diminished.