s I have said, best reached by rail; indeed, there is
little inducement to any one to reach it in any other way. Twenty years
ago Bisley was a tiny village. It is now a vast rifle range. The name
has become shifted from the little group of cottages and the quaint
church standing among the cornfields half a mile away to the huge
common enclosed by the National Rifle Association, where every year in
July the great shooting prizes are won and lost. Bisley is in many ways
unique. It carries on the traditions of Wimbledon, which were greater
than any other rifle meeting. It can show more targets and better ranges
than any other range; it attracts rifle-shots from every British
possession on the face of the globe, and for a week the rain of bullets
sent into the sandy banks behind the targets is almost ceaseless.
Perhaps the most remarkable sight of the "Bisley week" is the second
stage of the shooting for the King's Prize, when three hundred
competitors are "down" at the same time opposite a hundred targets in a
row, and when the shooting is not over until 6,300 separate shots have
been fired, signalled, and chalked on the blackboards by the
range-markers. But the great occasion is, of course, the final stage;
when the winner is chaired and cheered, and asked the usual ridiculous
questions about smoking and drinking. Through all the week of the
meeting the camp is a gay sight, with its white tents and flaring
bunting, and the pennons blowing all down the long ranges to measure the
wind for prone riflemen. "Lying prone on the back," by the way, is a
phrase which creeps into many newspapers during Bisley week. It would
clearly not do to speak of a "supine" rifle-shot.

One would think that the noise of a rifle-range would make the
neighbourhood intolerable. But even with the wind blowing to you from
the range, a few hundred yards almost silences the sound of the range. I
have walked on the common between Bisley itself and the range, when
firing for the King's Prize was in full progress, and was merely
conscious of an echo chattering uneasily in the trees.

There have been plenty of ways of spelling Bisley. Busele, Buselagh,
Bushley, Busheley, Busley, Bussley, Busly, and Bisleigh are a few of
them; there are probably variations. The church has a fine old wooden
porch, with an old yew opposite it; but the door is locked, and visitors
are not allowed to look over the church unaccompanied. My guide was
courteous and obliging; but