A: _Complete Manual for Young Sportsmen_.]

We not only recognize this difference in the powers of different
individuals, but we insist upon the importance of observing it in the
military organization of the rifle corps. The men who prove by their
work that they possess the skill which is the result of such a
combination of moral and physical characteristics as are here enumerated
should be selected for special duty, and armed with the most efficient
weapons that can be procured, which, even at four times the cost of
ordinary infantry muskets, would prove in the end the better economy, by
rendering needless the enormous waste of ammunition which seems
inseparable from the use of ordinary arms. The sharp-shooters thus
selected should be armed in part with the best rifles of ordinary
construction and weight, (and we are strongly inclined to believe, if
allowed their own choice, they would select the common American
hunting-rifle,) and a portion with the best telescope-rifles of the kind
we have heretofore described. We are well aware, that, till recently,
the introduction of these guns into the service has been scouted at by
military men, and the experiment of sending a company of men provided
with them and familiar with their use from this State was met with
ridicule, which, however, has been changed to admiration by the
triumphant manner in which they have vindicated the most sanguine hopes
of those who were instrumental in procuring their introduction.

A letter from a member of the company says of them,--"The
telescope-rifles more than equalled our expectations. They do good
service at a mile, and are certain death at half a mile." At Edwards's
Ferry, on the 22d of October, seventy men of this company repelled a
charge of fifteen hundred of the enemy and drove them from the field,
with the loss of more than one hundred killed, while not one of their
own men received a scratch. They lay upon the ground behind a fence,
resting their guns upon the lower rail, and the enemy came in sight half
a mile distant and started towards them at double-quick, loading and
firing as they ran; but before they had traversed half the distance,
they had learned that the whistle of every bullet was the death-knell of
one, and in many instances of more than one of their number, and coming
to a slight ravine, the temptation of its shelter from so fearful a
storm proved irresistible, and, turning up course, they fled in dismay,
leaving their