Mr. Dougall thinks there can be no reasonable question as to the advantages of learning to use the shot-gun with both eyes open. This has been proven time and again by the most rigid tests. It is even a settled fact that the nearer the eyes of an individual set together in the head the less he is likely to shoot well. “And yet,” says Mr. Dougall, “how strange it is to find sportsmen who would still further narrow this fine provision of nature into the diameter of one retina only. Throwing the fowling-piece into a line with the object of aim by an instinctive effort, keeping both eyes firmly fixed on and following the flight of the object, is the first great principle in shooting well.” _Gloan on Taking Aim._—The clever author of a neat little book entitled “The Breech-Loaders,” tells us that when the shot leave the gun the powder which propels the pellets has started them with sufficient force to keep them up for a short time against all natural resistances acting upon them, but finally gravitation, which is pulling upon them all the time, begins to tell, and carry them downward from the line upon which they set out. “The shot have a journey to perform after they leave the gun, and before they reach the bird. It may be a long journey or a short journey, according to the distance of the bird; but still it is a journey, and it takes some time to do it in. While the shot are traveling on their way, the bird is flying on _his_ way. If the bird is flying across the shooter, and the aim is at the bird, naturally, by the time the shot get to the point of aim, the bird has gone on beyond it, and is untouched by the shot. And if the distance is great, gravitation has affected the shot and pulled them down below the point of aim. Possibly, too, the wind is strong, and has blown them a little to one side. So that, assuming that a sportsman aims steadily and exactly at a cross-flying bird, sixty yards distant, going a mile a minute, the gun making a pattern good enough to kill, what results? “When the shot arrive at their point of destination they are from eight to ten feet behind the point to which the bird has flown; and they are from ten to twelve inches below the line upon which the bird was flying. If the wind is high they are blown aside, even on the lower line, and the other pellets become harmless if they hit. The bird escapes, as a matter of surprise to the young sportsman, who is confident that he ‘covered it exactly.’ “He did cover it, literally, and exactly, and that was the cause of the miss. If he had aimed the length of a fence rail ahead of the bird and half the length above it, he would probably have brought it down. As the shot was, however, the bird was sure to be lost.