• Thursday's Morning Post, contains a letter from Colonel MacLeod,
who writes deprecating any large expenditure to satisfy what he describes as "the craze for long ranges for rifle practice." In his opinion, marksmanship is not developed through the agency of such ranges. The burghers are the best shots in the world, paralleled only, perhaps, by our Colonial allies. And to what is their superiority owing ? Have these crack shots had their rifle ranges, their prizes, their elaborate devices for computing distance, and so forth ? "Nothing of the sort. Their practice has been limited to the shooting of wild animals at an average distance, as every sportsman will tell us, of some eighty or eighty-five yards." Herein lies the whole gist of the matter,—the man who can shoot well at one hundred yards can shoot well at any dis- tance. Though a little 'overstated; Colonel MacLeod's main proposition is perfectly sound. It is right that specially good shots should train themselves by long-distance shooting, but for ordinary purposes short ranges are all that is required. If this could only be get into the heads of the public We should far sooner reach our' ideal of a rifle range in every village. As it is, the craze for long practice ranges prevents hundreds of villages from possessing rifle clubs.. Never was the better more clearly the enemy of the good.
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