The Sun.
London, England, 1866-09-04 00:00:00

THE SUN, LONDON, TUESDAY EVENING, SEPTEMBER 4, 1866.

tween the contractors and the Board, they had
thought it,..pecessary to take a surrender of the con-
tract, and the directors regretted they were unable
to state that much progress had been made with the
works during the last three months. The terms of
the surrender of the contract by Messrs. Rigby had
been definitively arranged under the advice of coun-
sel for the company, within the limits of the certifi-
cates granted by the company's late engineer, and
negotiations were now pending with other con-
tractors for finishing the docks. Meanwhile two
large store sheds were being erected by Messrs.
Eassie and Co., which would shortly be finished,
and it was expected that immediately thereafter the
trade for which they were intended would be secured
and the jetty brought into profitable use. The bill
applied for in the last session of Parliament received
the Royal assent on the 18th May last, by which
the company were empowered to raise further capi-
tal to the amount of £300,000 (making £600,000 in
all), with greatly enlarged powers. The directors
stated that the difficulties they had met with, and
the delay in carrying out the works, had in no de-
gree lessened their confidence in the success of the
undertaking.
The report was adopted unanimously. The re-
tiring auditors were re-elected.

shot who misses half his birds, and he is a very bad shot I
if he merely wings or wounds at fair distances when he
ought to kill. A dead shot is the man who is thoroughly 1
master of the art of shooting and who can be sure of his 1
bird, let it fly off in whatever direction it will, so long as
it takes wing within range of his gun. Whether flying :
slow or fast, to right or left, rising or descending, over- :
head or down-wind, one and all are unerring marks to a
dead shot. And he does not merely wound his bird, so
that there is considerable difficulty in recovering it, nor,
on the other hand, does he cut or mangle them, so that they
are unfit for the table. He simply kills his birds by hitting
them in the most vulnerable parts ; they die in the air and
drop dead to his unerring aim. There is no need to rush
forward to pick up his birds for fear of their straggling
away ; where they fall they lie, and are picked up or re-
trieved by the dog as soon as the sportsman has reloaded.
The pleasure of shooting side by side with a dead shot
can only be appreciated by actual sport in company with
him. A mere pen-and-ink sketch wholly fails to convey
to the reader the true enjoyment and delight of a day's
sport with such a man, and the instruction to be gained
of him is considerable. He is cool, calm, and collected ;
he never appears to make a quick or sudden movement ;
and yet, if a brace of birds get up within range, they are
no sooner on the wing than they drop, first one and then
the other to his deadly aim. Every movement is easy and
apparently slow, and yet the quickest bird never escapes
him. A few days' sport with such a man never fails to
enkindle in the breast of a young aspirant, a thorough
sportsmanslike feeling. To shoot as a dead-shot shoots is
the very ambition of those who indulge in the use of the
gun ; but real dead-sh ots are few and far between. We
have met with several in our time, though not many ; one
in particular who lived to a great age, and who has now
been dead only about three or four years. At 70 years of
age he could shoot as well as ever ; the only thing that
beat him was fatigue. He could not, at that ago, stand
long days of fatigue without inconvenience. We have
frequently seen him shoot all day without a miss, and this,
too, in a good partridge-country in the months of Sep-
tember and October. We have heard his companions tell
him, they thought, if he liked, he could hit any particular
feather in his birds, so deadly was his aim. One thing
we always noticed : his birds were killed so much cleaner
than those of other sportmen, and were almost always hit
in the fore part; those only had wounds in the rump that
were shot whilst flying in a direct line from his gun.
In all his cross and other shots the birds were hit in
the head and neck, or under the fore-part of the wings.
Many a sportsman of the present day would do well to take
a hint from such observations. The big fault of young
sportsmen and learners is, that they shoot too slow and
too far behind the bird, and thus they fail to bag half
the birds they actually strike with their shot. So, too, of
hares and rabbits ; they do not shoot forward enough, and
so they either miss their aim or hit the animal in the least
vulnerable part of its body. In shooting at a hare the
sportsman should be sure that his gun covers the. tips of
the oars at the moment of firing, and he may be sure of his
prize. A dead-shot is, too, of necessity, a most accurate
calculator of distances and rate of flight of the objects of
his sport. If it were not so, it would be impossible that he
could kill his birds with so much certainty. He estimates
in a moment, with his eye, the distance at which a bird
rises, and the same on firing ; and so he never shoots out
of:range, for it is no sport for him to wound his birds and
not to bag them. The rate of flight is also readily esti-
mated by the eye, and he shoots more or lass quickly, and
in advance of the bird, according to the speed or velocity
of its flight ; for it would be unreasonable to suppose that
by firing only two inches in front of a partridge crossing
at right angles at fifty yards, at a rapid flight, you would,
therefore, kill the bird, or even touch it, because expe-
rience and a few moments reflection show it to be as
absurd as it is impossible ; whereas, if the bird were flying
slow and laboured it might be killed, though the sports-
man took his aim about two inches in advance of the head
of the bird. But for a rapid flight, crosswise, at such a
distance, twelve inches in advance of the bird 'would be
none too much for a deadly aim. It is impossible that
that any precise rules can be laid down on these points, so
to as to ensure success. The variations in the rate of
flight, the distance of the bird, the route or direction of its
course, and other circumstances, all tending to different
degrees of calculation, which can only be acted
upon with success by sportsmen of skill and expe-
rience, who, by long practice, have acquired the art of
measuring distances with the eye, and calculating the rate
of flight through the same medium. had shots, nervous
sportsmen, and those who never reflect on these rudimen-
tary principles, might, in truth, here find the sequel to
their ill-success. Whenever such plain glaring rules are
disregarded success can only be a mere matter of chance.
And so it is that, out of every ten or dozen shots, the
worst of sportsmen, by chance, knock down a bird, but they
rarely kill one, as a good sportsman does—viz., so that it
dies in the air and lies where it falls, all the time the sports-
man re-loads. To mangle a bird to atoms, breaking every
bone in the skin, is unskilful sport ; so also to merely wing
a bird, or hit it hard in the rump, or break both legs, is
equally unskilful, and is very bad shooting, because in all
three of the latter modas the bird would be very difficult
to capture, and probably half an hour or more may be con-
sumed in each case in looking after the bird, and yet after
all it is not recovered. Such shooting is, too, as cruel and
unfair as it is unsportsmanlike ; and unless a man can,
after considerable practice, improve upon such a mode of
sport, he should retire from the field, and leave others to
sport who are better able to use the gun. It is positively
ludicrous to witness the state of excitement into which
some people work themselves in looking for a wounded
bird—one they have chanced to knock down, but not to
kill. How eagerly they hunt for it ! how perseveringly !
though the bird has probably wandered half a mile or more
from the spot since (if only winged); or may be with its
legs broken, it lies exactly where it pitched, but the idanti-
' calwhereabout cannot be hit upon by either the shooter

or his dog.
An excitable person cannot shoot well, or, at all events,
only in his cool and calculating moments. In our experi-
ence we have always found such men downright bad shots.
They are too hasty in every movement. No matter how
near a bird gets up, the gun is instantly levelled at it, and,
generally, the bird is missed. We knew one of these sort
of shooters who used, unconsciously, in his excitement on
a bird getting up to bend his body, and lean his head and
neck forward, in such a ridiculous attitude, on levelling
his gun, that it seemed absurd for one moment to imagine
that he could hit the object aimed at ; and, indeed, he
never did in our presence when in such an attitude. We
improved his shooting very much by fairly laughing him
out of his "excitable attitude " as we termed it ; and on
drawin
thgaeskguetn to chon paper of his peculiar position on pre-
senting fire,and showing it to him, he declared
he had no idea that he ever threw himself into such an
attitude, but, on watching himself afterwards, he told us
he found it quite as we had sketched him.
The unerring sportsman has none of those bad habits ;
ho stands erect, in an easy and natural position; and as
easily, raises the gun to his shoulder, and drops the bird.
If the bird rises very near, he follows it with his eye until
it has gone a fair distance, and then he lightly raises the
gun to his shoulder, and down falls the bird—dead, but
not cut to pieces ; on the contrary, so cleanly shot that
scarcely a feather seems ruffied—blood oozes from the
mouth, and such is a certain sign that the bird is hit in a
vital part; and the vitals are in the fore part, not in the
hinder. If young sportsmen would only remember that
little fact, and shoot forwarder and higher at flying and
running objects, they would have the satisfaction of kill-
ing oftener instead of wounding.
In all our experience we never mot with a young sports-
man who had the fault of shooting either too high or too
forwards, but we have met with scores who had the reverse
fault, and who found it difficult to get out of it. The ex-
planation is easily given; they insist on seeing the object
along the barrel of their gun at the moment of pressing
the trigger, instead of taking a sight at it along the top of
the barrel, they would have the pleasingsatisfaction to find
that instead of missing or wounding almost every time,
they would kill their birds " dead as door nails." These'
are no idle theoriesi, but lessons in shooting derived from
the result of long practical experience and close observa-
tion, and wo recommend them to tho consideration of in-
experienced sportsmen, bad shots, and young shooters, who
aspire to become "sportsmen" in the true old English style
of the term.
And now as to the sportsman's dogs ; and here again
common sense must be called in aid. A dog is a very obe-
dient and intelligent animal: all rational instruction
bestowed upon it well repays the sportsman ; but irrational
and inconsiderate attempts to instruct a dog aro as absurd
as they are useless. Who has not seen the ignorant booby
bullying his dog in such language thatunloss the dog were
gifted with a thorough knowledge of the English language
it is quite impossible it could understand what is required
of him. Such as, " Ah ! you rascal ; what did you do that
for, eh ?" " Where have you been, sir, eh ?" " If ever you
do that again, I'll give it you, sir !" and hundreds of such
observations, to say nothing of oaths and imprecations,
which fall from the lips of some men whenever they ad-
dress their dogs. We knew a fellow who used to curse
and swear at his dog so often that on one occasion we
heard him swear at one of his men ; the pointer was near
by, and having heard its master address it in the same lan-
guage, the poor brute put its tail between its legs and ran
off home.
" Your dog is too much of a saint to listen to such lan-
guage as that," I said; "see, he has run off." The fellow
turned, and seeing the dog was running off as fast as he
could, called out, " D—n you, come back, will you ?" But
no; the poor brute feared it had incurred its master's dis-
pleasure, and not at all knowing what " come back, will
you ?" meant, only ran away tho faster. I then suggested
that the simple way
of calling a. dog was to whistle him,
and speak kindly to him ; on doing which the dog returned
immediately.
Dogs quickly learn names and short sentences, such as
"hold up!" "come in r, "fetch it !" "go seek!" and such
like ; but long sentences are unintelligible to dumb
animals.
The best
system of dog-breaking is by dumb or silent
signals, i.e., by motion of the hand or other part of the
body. Everything required of a dog in the field may be
taught by the silent process, and it is of all others the most
rational and successful. With a dog perfectly trained to
obey signals instead of words, the sportmans chances of
getting within shot of game are very much increased, par-

titularly if the game is wild. The human voice disturbs
and frightens game, and, therefore, the sportsman silent of
tread, and dumb of tongue, always gets nearer to his game
than a garrulous or talkative one. A single note or a soft
whistlo is sufficient to call a dog's attention to you in a
field, and then the rest may be done by the motion of the
hand ; and it is astonishing how very quickly a well-bred
dog acquires the habit of understanding your signals, pro-
vided you do not change them so as to confuse him.
The advantages of keeping silent when in search of game
aro easily appreciable to those who practise it ; and even
the dog is intelligent enough to know and observe it in the
field.

Many sportsmen have a habit, too, of cheering their
dogs on to hunt, by constant interruptions of encouraging
words. But it would be much wiser to say nothing, and
merely give, by wave of hand, directions to the dog as to
the course ho is to take on boating the field. We strongly
advocate the silent system of dog-breaking as the most
successful that can be pursued.
As to the sportsman's gun, breech-loaders are now so
much improved and are so attractive, now that rifles of
that sort have become the favourite national weapon, that
most sportsmen to whom expense is no object, will now
probably provide themselves with a breech-loader ; and
indeed there is now a greater demand for breach-loading
guns than for muzzle-loaders. The breech-loader has its
advantages as well as disadvantages ; tho muzzle-loader is
very much the lighter weight of the two, but in the hands
of a strong man the extra weight is no very great objection.