The complete manual for young sportsmen Author:Henry William Herbert Purchase of this book includes free trial access to www.million-books.com where you can read more than a million books for free. This is an OCR edition with typos. Excerpt from book: THE GUN, AND HOW TO USE IT. After becoming possessed of a good gun, in accordance with the means, object and idea of the individual, the one thing essent... more »ial is to know how to use it. And this knowledge, once acquired, lasts for ever, yet does not last unchanged, or, like most sublunary things, change only to deteriorate ; for what is at first acquired with difficulty and much painstaking, gradually becomes a habit, ripens into a second nature, and, constantly improved by practice, by experience, by freshly-discovered resources and trials of the power of the weapon, shall be at last, almost, as it were, an innate instinct, acting without deliberation orforethought as if on the profoundest calculation, and accomplishing results, in the twinkling of an eye, to arrive at which scientifically would require the solution of intricate problems. The master of his gun once, moreover, is master of the art for ever, and of all guns ; and let what improvements or changes soever take place in the science, none will occur, in which he will not immediately participate, and find his ancient superiority still available. For all improvements simplify, facilitate, add, in a word, to the power of the weapon, or to the celerity of the performance, or to the convenience of the performer. If the change render it more difficult to shoot well, it is a retrograde step, not an improvement. For example, the percussion system is now, in spite of all old-fashioned prejudice and opposition, an admitted improvement on the old flint-and-steel system; and one, not the least, of its advantages is, that it has so much simplified the art of shooting flying, that there are now ten good shots, where there was one, forty years ago. Consequently, the person who had learned with much toil and labor to s...« less