36 



SPOBTING GUNS. 



[Nov., 



SPOBTING GUNS. 



S an article of sport the gun stands pre-eminent. Neither the- 

 rod nor the bow have now bestowed upon their production one 

 half of the thought lavished upon gunnery : they, therefore, are 

 more distant from perfection. An illuminated manuscript of the- 

 fifteenth century has for ornament the sketch of a grotesque figure 

 firing a small hand-cannon at a barn-door cock. This caricature of a 

 sportsman, and the accompanying directions referring to ' Y^ Gonne, 

 and Howe to Use Itte,' is one of the earliest notices of the employment 

 of firearms for sporting purposes. 



The ancient guns preserved in our museums, with their clumsy 



YE GONNE, AND HOW TO USE ITTE. 



worm-eaten stocks, ill-balanced barrels, and cumbrous attachments, 

 seem wholly unfitted for sporting purposes. Nevertheless, guns were 

 used in the chase as early as the fifteenth century. Wars on the 

 Continent kept the gunmakers busy and fully employed in the per- 

 fecting of military weapons. In the intervals of peace the improve- 

 ment of sporting arms was developed, and after the close of the Thirty 

 Years' War special attention was given in Germany to the production 

 of better balanced and more suitable weapons for sporting purposes. 



Towards the close of last century the English gunsmiths, by closer 

 application and the.more rapid improvement of the sporting shot-gun, 

 gained for themselves a supremacy they have since retained. 



To enumerate even tlie more noticeable points in the evolution of 

 the perfected sporting gun of to-day would require a volume. As 

 guns belonging to a pSst era, or quickly passing to the forgotten, are 

 muzzle-loaders, flint and percussion, pinfire breech-loaders, and under- 

 Icver breech actions. The present period is a transient one. The 

 central fire hammered breech-loader is more or less quickly giving 



