GUNSMITHS. 441 



GUNSMITHS. 



We have in our country several deserving and ingenious me- 

 chanics who have devoted many years to the manufacture of 

 fire-arms almost exclusively for sporting-purposes ; and if they 

 had met with half the liberality and encouragement that are so 

 freely bestowed by the English gentry upon the same class of 

 operatives in the old country, we no doubt should now be able to 

 boast of men in this branch of business who could vie in every 

 thing with those of England. 



Our sportsmen, however, are too much in the habit of trusting 

 their lives, as well as those of their friends, to the use of one of 

 the many cheap guns which are either imported into this country 

 from England, or, what is still worse, from Germany. This being 

 the case, we cannot be surprised at the frequent occurrence of 

 accidents of a serious character, in every section of the country, 

 during the shooting-season. 



There are several gunmakers in New York, all of whom are said 

 to be clever in their profession. Each and every one of them 

 have their patrons, always ready to extol them and their works to 

 the skies. We are not, however, personally acquainted with any 

 of them, and therefore only state what we have learned from others 

 respecting these men. We have examined some of their work, 

 and certainly have no fault to find with the greater portion of that 

 which has come under our notice as "crack jobs," although their 

 ordinary every-day work is far inferior to much of the same kind 

 turned out of the second-rate gunshops of England. 



In Philadelphia we also have several respectable gunmakers 

 entitled to notice. All of these mechanics are about on a par 

 with those of New York, although they claim for themselves a 

 superiority over those of the latter city; with what truth, how- 

 ever, we know not, as their work all seems about the same in 

 appearance and quality, and their guns shoot no farther or stronger, 

 so far as we are able to judge. In what their superiority consists 

 we are at a loss to say, except it be in the fact that they turn out 



