The second volume of Major Gerald Burrard's The Modern Shotgun
(Jenkins, 15s.) deals principally and exhaustively with the problem of the cartridge. This topic involvefi excursions into -the chemical composition of powders and various detonating compounds, and into ballistics for pressure, velocity and recoil. But apart from scientific technicalities or, more correctly, through their very medium, the practical sportsman will pick up from this volume many a wrinkle, and that a reasoned wrinkle. He will be put in the way of properly estimating the merits of powders and caps, hi will learn that cartridges, like old books, keep best in an atmosphere of slight but constant humidity, and that it i$ hardly worth while reloading used paper cases. Conversely he will be asked to shed many prejudices—that there are, for example, such things as " hard-shooting " guns or " very quick"- cartridges (tested at least by human perceptive powers) or that gas escapes are always due to high pressure'. It used to be said of the cartridge and the pheasant that " Up gets a guinea, off goes three-halfpence and down comes half-a-crown." Major Burrard's book will ensure the sports- man's receiving full value for his three-halfpence or its post-
War equivalent.
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