Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 90.djvu/881

 Popular Science Monthly

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��Aiding the One- Eyed

Shooter to Sight

Accurately

THE middle aged man, accustomed all his life to shoot from one shoulder, can learn to shoot from the other shoulder just about as easily as he can learn to write with his left hand. But, while men who have lost the use of the right hand learn to write with the other hand because they have to, most men, having to change shoul- ders, stop shooting instead.

The eye directly back of the gun-rib is the guiding eye. If that is lost or injured, and the left eye put in command of the gun shot from the right shoulder, then the gun shoots neatly to the left of everything fired at. Unfortunately the eye back of the gun is the one to be injured if anything happens in the way of blow-ups or blow-backs. In sidling around the difficulty created by an injured right eye, it has been the practice to make a cross- eyed stock, with a lateral bend in it, so that the gun, held at the right shoulder, will line its barrels up before the left eye. This is clumsy and costly, and usually altogether ineffective.

Finally an American trapshooter, H. W. Cadwallader, a profes- sional in the employ of a big cartridge com- pany, found the obvi- ous remedy. He evolved an ofT-set rib which is attached to the shotgun barrel and which is set off to the left just far enough to line up before the left or guiding eye with the gun at the other shoul- der. The sole difference is that the pattern of the gun, some three feet across at effective ranges, is, say, two inches off-center.

As proof of the pudding, the inventor broke 96 per cent of 700 clay birds fired at with this off-set rib — a good record for any man.

���A hedge of spiny cactus, sixteen feet high in some places and five feet thick, keeps out thieves and makes an attractive wall

��Keeping Out Fruit Thieves with a Fence of Spiny Cactus

NEAR Glendale, Calif., is a fence which makes a very satisfactory guard for an orange and apricot grove. It is a cactus fence, grown by a rancher whose fruit was stolen by every one who passed along the road. He planted a large number of cactus shoots along his fence line. In about a year a spiny hedge had grown up to a height of three feet. It is now nearly six- teen feet in height and from five to six feet thick.

If the barbed wire fence is dreaded by ever>' thief, what can be said of the cactus hedge? It is practically impossible to climb through it. On each of the cactus leaves are hundreds of needle-like spines. The prick of a spine may pass un- noticed at first, but an hour later inflamma- tion and pain begin. During the blooming season of this cactus hedge, which is between the first of May and the last of July, the fence is beautiful. The spiny buds form on the edges of the leaves, generally clustering about the tips, and soon what is known as the "cac- tus apple" appears.

���The off-center device which makes it possible to shoot fro' n the right shoulder at effective ranges while sighting with the left eye

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