368 



The American Ane^ler. 



trickiness. Sir Scott's i,^iin turned out 

 to be a " fourteen " by proof mark, half 

 chased, bored out into a "twelve," 

 taken apart, filed down between the 

 barrels at the breeches, where the metal 

 ought to be the stoutest, and again 

 brazed together — a process which Mr. 

 Greener disowns as the most injurious 

 to which a gun can be subjected. 



Heavens! with what a yell they 

 opened. Tray, Blanche and Sweetheart, 

 with dogs and big hound, brach, and 

 cur, and trundlespit of low degree. 

 Paid hackney scribblers, every one of 

 them, by the importing gunsellers, the 

 hardware men, and wholesale slaughter 

 mongers of the city — all, save with one 

 exception, and he a judge of high 

 degree, who after buying a gun sent 

 me to dispose of by the manufacturer, 

 and after seeing the private letters of 

 that manufacturer to myself, persisted 

 in asserting that the work looked very 

 much like the work of " Moore & Har- 

 ris," of Birmingham, when he knew it 

 to be the work of " Moore & Gray," of 

 London. 



Hence, I can judge what a roar will 

 arise on the appearance of this work, 

 from the venders of the two-penny iron, 

 Wedgebury skelp, and shamdamn iron 

 murdering machines, at this open and 

 straightforward attack on their slaugh- 

 ter houses, and every exposition, not 

 only of their evil devices, and tricks of 

 the trade, but the means to be adopted 

 in order to procure at a. reasonable 

 figure, a safe and serviceable weapon, 

 whether for war or pleasure. 



But in this, in part will be our reward 

 the more loudly they roar, the more 

 sharply we shall know them to be 

 pinched. 



And if we induce any of our friends, 

 the sporting world in general, to look 

 to the honest and legitimate maker, 



either of England or of our own 

 country, whether of London or the 

 provinces, instead of the Mugginses 

 and Snobbses, the jobbers and peddlers 

 of importing gunsellers, we shall feel 

 proud of ourselves as having done some 

 service, if not to the States, at least to 

 the common cause of humanity and 

 nature. 



Without further preamble or apology 

 we shall now proceed at once to the 

 history of the gun, from the period of 

 its invention in the weakest of all forms 

 in the fifteenth century, to that of its 

 highest yet attained perfection in the 

 nineteenth — I say yet attained, for I 

 have little doubt that the great stimulus 

 given by the late revolutionary move- 

 ments, the war and rumors of war now 

 in the West, will tend to vast improve- 

 ments in this arm, both as regards 

 range and accuracy of direction — the 

 needle gun of the Prussian service, and 

 the celebrated Minnie rifle or Carabine 

 a tigc of the French Chasseurs de 

 Vincennes, as well as Colonel Hawker's 

 double barrelled carbine appearing, if 

 the accoiints rendered of this weapon 

 are to be relied on — as there seems no 

 reason why they should not — to be vast 

 strides in advance of anything yet 

 known. 



THE HISTORY OF THE GUN. 



The first invention of gunpowder 

 took place, it is probable, very many 

 years prior to the date usually attribu- 

 ted to it, and though generally conceded 

 to the Arabians, undoubtedly it is 

 to be accredited to that wonderful 

 unprogressive people, the Chinese, 

 who, though acquainted with it in all 

 probability before the Christian era, 

 have applied it, in thousands of years, 

 to little use more practical than the 

 manufacture of the Chinese cracker. 

 It was probably first rediscovered in 



