modern construction you often
miss. If you spring the bird yourself the noise may startle you, and
yet somehow you settle down to your aim and drop him. With a
wheel-lock, if I could get a tolerably clear view, I think I could
bring him down. If only a brace rewarded a day's roaming under oak
and beech, through fern and past thicket, I should be amply
satisfied. With the antique weapon the spirit of the wood would
enter into one. The chances of failure add zest to the pursuit. For
slaughter, however, our modern guns are unsurpassed.

Another point which occurs to one after such an overhauling of guns
as I went through is the price charged for them. There does seem
something very arbitrary in the charges demanded, and one cannot
help a feeling that they bear no proportion to the real value or
cost of production. It may, of course, be said that the wages of
workmen are very high--although workmen as a mass have long been
complaining that such is not really the case. The rent of premises
in fashionable localities is also high, no doubt. For my part, I
would quite as soon buy a gun in a village as in a crowded
thoroughfare of the Metropolis; indeed rather sooner, since there
would probably be a range attached where it could be tried. To be
offered a range, as is often the case in London, half an hour
out--which, with getting to the station and from the station at the
other end, to the place and back, may practically mean half a
day--is of little use. If you could pick up the gun in the shop,
stroll outside and try it at once, it would be ten times more
pleasant and satisfactory. A good gun is like the good wine of the
proverb--if it were made in a village, to that village men would go
or send for it. The materials for gun making are, surely, not very
expensive--processes for cheapening steel and metal generally are
now carried to such an extent, and the market for metals has fallen
to an extraordinary extent. Machinery and steam-power to drive it
is, no doubt, a very heavy item; but are we so anxious for machinery
and machine-made guns? Are you and I anxious that ten thousand other
persons should shoot with guns exactly, precisely like ours in every
single particular? That is the meaning of machinery. It destroys the
individuality of sport. We are all like so many soldiers in an army
corps firing Government Martini-Henries. In the sporting ranks one
does not want to be a private. I wonder some clever workman does not
go a