44 MUZZLE-LOADERS AND BREECH-LOADERS. 
made in the minutie of the manufacture; and now 
it is the general impression of those acquainted with 
the arm, that the breech-loader, with a slight addi- 
tional increase of powder, shoots both stronger and 
closer than its rival. In the pigeon-match between 
the nobility and gentry of England in 1863, described 
in the London Field, volume xxiii., p. 389, where it 
is to be supposed that the best implements the 
country could furnish were used, and where some 
of the shooting was done at thirty yards, the first 
and second prizes were both taken by breech-loaders. 
With all allowance for the quality of the marksman, 
the quality of the gun that wins a match at English 
“blue-rocks”” must unquestionably be good; and 
this, the universal experience of those matter-of-fact 
John Bulls, who test everything by success, has en- 
tirely confirmed. 
A trial of guns was made in 1859, and the results 
were published in tabular form in Zhe Shot-Gun 
and Sporting Rifle, by Stonehenge, p. 304. The 
targets were made of double bag-cap paper, 90 lbs. 
to the ream, circular, thirty inches in diameter, with 
a centre of twelve inches square, and were nailed 
against a smooth surface of deal boards. The centres 
were composed of forty thicknesses for forty yards, 
and twenty for sixty yards, and weighed eighteen 
and nine ounces respectively, with such slight varia- 
tion as will always occur in brown paper. The 
powder was Laurence’s No. 2, the shot No. 6, con- 
taining 290 pellets to the ounce, and the charges 
were weighed in every instance. 
