SHOT.--Here is a division of my subject much less easily disposed of than the last. The selection of shot is a question upon which many of the best authorities are at issue. Some deal with it only in reference to the game for which it is intended; others consider it merely as having relation to the length and diameter of the barrel for which it is required. I recommend the middle course,--_medio tutissimus ibis_. Colonel Hawker tells us that “it is not so much the magnitude of the pellet, as the force with which it is driven, that does the execution.” No one can accord more cheerful fealty than I do to the generality of that first-rate sportsman’s opinions; but I cannot allow my admiration to dazzle my common sense, or to subscribe to this hypothesis. With a swan-drop, you break the leg of wild-boar or red-deer; but could any force known to the science of projectiles accomplish it with a grain of number 9, or dust-shot? The rule should be, to suit your number to your game--the exception, to your gun and its calibre. Taking the average size at which fowling-pieces are now made, and the general character of English sporting, I have no hesitation in saying that there are very few instances in which number 7 will not be found to answer the purposes of a day’s shooting. It is not the power to penetrate that fills the bag. Many a bird carries off a quarter of an ounce of lead in his body; but break his wing, and what can he do then? The advocate of small shot urges the increased space which it covers, and _consequently_ the increased chances in favour of its hitting; but to hit your bird, and to bring him down, are two very different things. Catch him anywhere with a good-sized pellet, and the odds are that he comes to bag; stuff him with _dust_, and he flies away with a whole charge, unless it has encountered a vital part. It is to be remembered that I am not here addressing my observations to first-rate masters of the trigger,--to such professors as Ross, Sutton, or Osbaldiston. I have not deemed it necessary to go into the relative merits of shot upon such minute niceties as the increased rotatory motion of the larger pellets, and the like. In an epitomised treatise like this, the length of my design only extends to offering the best general hints that suggest themselves to me, as applicable to the service of the novice. To such, then, I say, in all ordinary cases, make use of number 7: never go higher, for a jack-snipe will often fly away with the full of a charger of number 9 in his body. If, however, your sport lies exclusively in thick woodlands, or where only very long shots are likely to be had, supply yourself with numbers 2 or 3; but at the same time take care to provide a long and heavy gun, that will throw them even, and not in lumps and clusters.