If five or six hours' worming, _ventre a terre_,
up the bed of a mountain-torrent, with not even a rowan-bush to aid
concealment, succeed in bringing the sports-man within two hundred
yards of his unconscious game, it is a good day's performance. How,
the dun deer's hide once perforated, the "tail" of game-keepers,
beaters and volunteer hangers-on is gathered up, the comforting
toothfu' of usquebaugh absorbed by the toilers of the brae, the victim
"gralloched" and suspended across the inevitable gray Highland pony
that makes such a capital "first light" for the foreground, and the
line of triumphant march taken up for hunting-box, clachan or castle,
have we not been told to repletion? The tool used on these occasions
is up to the latest requirements of modern science. Whitworth and
Lancaster, thanks to their projectile's being wedged in so tight as
to cause an occasional misunderstanding it and the breech-plug as to
which was expected to move, have grown unpopular. The style and the
patentee vary every year or two or oftener, breech-loading and the
elongated bullet being the only persistent features.
Among the commonalty of Britain, within a very few years past,
rifle-clubs and matches have been brought greatly into vogue under
government encouragement. Austria, _tu infelix_ this time, having
served unwillingly as an experimental target, with the most
distinguished and gratifying success to the experimenters, at
Solferino and Sadowa, gave a new impetus to the rifle movement in
England, as France, a trifle later, did to the Battle-of-Dorking
school of prophetic literature.
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