-we stick to the
flint. "Flint," says Colonel Hawker, "shoots strongest into the bird." A
percussion-gun is quicker, but flint is fast enough; and it does,
indeed, argue rather a confusion than a rapidity of ideas, to find fault
with lightning for being too slow. With respect to the flash in the pan,
it is but a fair warning to ducks, for example, to dive if they can, and
get out of the way of mischief. It is giving birds a chance for their
lives, and is it not ungenerous to grudge it? When our gun goes to our
shoulder, that chance is but small; for with double-barrel Brown Bess,
it is but a word and a blow,--the blow first, and long before you could
say Jack Robinson, the gorcock plays thud on the heather. But we beg
leave to set the question at rest for ever by one single clencher. We
have killed fifty birds--grouse--at fifty successive shots--one bird
only to the shot. And mind, not mere pouts--cheepers--for we are no
chicken-butchers--but all thumpers--cocks and hens as big as their
parents, and the parents themselves likewise; not one of which fell _out
of bounds_ (to borrow a phrase from the somewhat silly though skilful
pastime of pigeon-shooting), except one that suddenly soared half-way up
to the moon, and then

"Into such strange vagaries fell
As he would dance,"

and tumbled down stone-dead into a loch. Now, what more could have done
a detonator in the hands of the devil himself? Satan might have shot as
well, perhaps, as Christopher North--better we defy him; and we cannot
doubt that his detonator--given to him in a present, we believe, by Joe
Manton--is a prime article--one of the best ever manufactured on the
percussion system. But what more could he have done? When we had killed
our fiftieth bird in style, we put it to the Christian reader, would not
the odds have been six to four on the flint? And would not Satan, at the
close of the match, ten birds behind perhaps, and with a bag shamefully
rich in poor pouts, that would have fallen to the ground had he but
thrown salt on their tails, have looked excessively sheepish? True, that
in rain or snow the percussion-lock will act, from its detonating power,
more correctly than the common flint-lock, which, begging its pardon,
will then often not act at all; but that is its only advantage, and we
confess a great one, especially in Scotland, where it is a libel on the
country to say that it always rains, for it almost as often snows.
However, spite of