MISCELLAXEOUS IIIXTS. 427 



There is, however, a recoil ; and this recoil, as before observed, 

 is deadened in proportion to the weight of metal in the breech, 

 the shape and build of the stock, as well as in some measure by 

 the mode of holding the weapon. 



If, however, the charge in its exit from the gun should meet 

 with any obstruction far up the barrel, where the metal is thin and 

 the gun only lightly balanced in the hand by a grasp of the stock 

 near the guard, the sudden shock given to it by the resistance of 

 the obstacle encountered will communicate a jar or quick jerk to 

 the weapon, which will be felt at the shoulder, and not expended, 

 as in the other case, upon the breech or stock. 



The reason of this, we presume, is that the retro-action imparted 

 to a fowling-piece by a regular charge of powder and shot is not a 

 jumping, jerking rebound, but a regular and steady recoil, as it 

 were confined to the thick chambers of the gun, and lost upon the 

 stock before it reaches the shoulder of the shooter; but, in the 

 other case, the motion imparted to the gun is a jumping or jerking 

 recoil, which has not the heavy breech to break its immediate 

 effects upon, and is consequently transmitted without interruption 

 along the outside of the barrel directly to the person of the 

 sportsman. 



This action will be quite different in the case of the experi- 

 mental ordnance-pieces, as has been already demonstrated; for 

 there was neither a heavy breech nor long stock to ward off or 

 receive the repercussion in those guns, and the whole force of the 

 explosion consequently was transmitted immedia./^'ly to the timber 

 to which they were all attached, and necessarily occasioned the 

 conclusion arrived at by Commodore Stockton. 



Commodore Stockton's little pamphlet, the result of much care 

 and ingenuity on his part in the prosecution of these highly in- 

 teresting experiments, requires no notice from us: it speaks for 

 itself. But we may be permitted to state that we were led to this 

 partial review of some of its points from the interest we felt in the 

 subject, and from the circumstance of a copy having been sent to 



