o7- 



riw American A)i!^lcr. 



in some degree compensates for the 

 other loss. 



Let, however, the cheaply-gunned 

 sportsman go out with his friend, 

 armed " as best becomes a man " with 

 a first-rate West-End or Greener gun, 

 on a wild, windy day, when quail will 

 scarce lie to the dog, but whist up and 

 away on swift pinions, and he shall see 

 the London Greener gun doing its 

 work sharp, short and decisive ; no 

 tipping wings, no towered birds, no 

 miserable cripples sent wabbling away 

 to die at their leisure in a bramble 

 brake, but cutting them down clean- 

 killed, right and left, at its thirty and 

 forty, and perhaps, once in a while, 

 fifty yards, while his own fifty-dollar 

 Birmingham is bringing down lots of 

 feathers but no fowl. 



Let him try the two side by side on 

 a squally morning at Shoot's Landing, 

 or any of the other snipe-grounds on 

 the Delaware, where away go the long- 

 bills, twisting and twirling as if they 

 were possessed of the foul fiend scaipc ! 

 scaipc ! scaipc ! scaipc ! fifty yards 

 before the keen nose of his steadiest 

 setter, and he will soon find, that, 

 while they do escape his Birmingham 

 blunderbuss, they go down regularly 

 enough before his friend's crack gun, 

 whether its maker's name be Moore 

 and Gray, or Mullin, Cooper, or Lan- 

 caster, Egg, or Forsyth, or Krider. 



It may be noted with surprise that I 

 deny all claims of improvement of the 

 gun, to all the various attempts to 

 make repeating, or revolving, or 

 breech-loading weapons, patent load- 

 ing muzzles, patent primers, which 

 every day is producing by scores and 

 hundreds, to be puffed in the daily 

 papers and forgotten. 



I do deny them all in toto ; for so far 

 as I can perceive and learn, or appre- 



hend, not one of them is altogether 

 practicable, while many are mere 

 Yankee trumpery, not worth a second 

 thought. 



In my judgment, no weapon is a 

 weapon and no improvement an 

 improvement, which is not directly 

 applicable to and available in the 

 field, either for the chase or warfares. 

 Therefore it is that I regard the load- 

 ing muzzles, the telescope sights and 

 all the other fiddle-faddle of the New 

 York Rifle Club as the most ineffable 

 of humbugs. 



The Prussian needle gun has proved 

 impracticable on account of its com- 

 plication and the difficulty of cleaning 

 it, except for very small bodies of 

 picked men. Colonel Colt's revolving 

 pistol, the only form in which that 

 patent is really available, is objection- 

 able from the same causes, and farther 

 from the impossibilitv of its being 

 repaired during the course of a 

 campaign by the common regimental 

 armorer, and it is not too much to say 

 that it never could be adapted to the 

 arming of even a regiment, much less 

 a brigade or a corps dc arrncc consti- 

 tuted of such material as compose 

 modern armies, however efficacious 

 they may prove as officers' weapons, 

 or as the arms of small bodies of 

 veteran foresters and woodsmen, like 

 the Texan hunters or the men of the 

 prairies. 



None of them are in the least 

 adapted to field sports, and only, I 

 think, as I have observed above, with 

 modifications, as weapons of war. 

 Jenning's rifle is barred by the exceed- 

 ing complications of its machinery. 

 vSharp's breech-loading rifle, I have 

 heard well spoken of, but have never 

 tried it. On inspection I thought it 

 very cumbersome and unhandv ; I am 



