A Cockney friend, who is very apt to draw the long bow, and is evidently
less of a sportsman than he pretends to be, relates to me the following
not very credible yarn:--
"I've just been pheasant-shooting with my friend the duke. We had
splendid sport, and I made some wonderful shots. What do you think of
this, for instance? Perhaps you can twist it into a puzzle. The duke and
I were crossing a field when suddenly twenty-four pheasants rose on the
wing right in front of us. I fired, and two-thirds of them dropped dead
at my feet. Then the duke had a shot at what were left, and brought down
three-twenty-fourths of them, wounded in the wing. Now, out of those
twenty-four birds, how many still remained?"
It seems a simple enough question, but can the reader give a correct
answer?