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SHOT-GUNS. 



The last outrage was due to exasperation at be- 

 ing deprived of some Government land which 

 the Porte had reclaimed in order to settle Mo- 

 hammedan immigrants from Herzegovina and 

 Bosnia. A few weeks later the Servian vice- 

 consul at Pristina, Marinkovich by name, was 

 murdered. The Servian Government, attribut- 

 ing the act to Bulgarian intrigue, though after- 

 ward the murderer was found to be an Arnaut, 

 demanded reparation from the Porte. 



The Liberals, the party of liistich, the chief 

 Regent, in June, 1889, announced as their pro- 

 gramme the union of all the branches of the 

 Servian family under one sovereign. The patri- 

 otic St. Savo Society provided means for the ed- 

 ucation of a hundred youths from Turkish lands. 

 The Bulgarians complained that the Servian 

 political propaganda was pushed industriously 

 among the Macedonian Bulgarians, and were 

 disposed to deny that the Servian race was rep- 

 resented at all in Macedonia. The efforts of the 

 Servians to maintain their influence were of lit- 

 tle avail against the steady absorption of the 

 Slavs of Turkey into the Bulgarian nation. The 

 soreness of the Servians at the desertion of the 

 St. Savo School by pupils brought from Mace- 

 donia found vent in a sharp diplomatic quarrel 

 when it was fonnd that the Bulgarian agent had 

 assisted the young men to escape to Sophia. 

 One of the most famous of the Servian agitators 

 in Macedonia, the priest Stojan Kristich, who 

 had taken up an attitude of hostility to the 

 newly consecrated Bulgarian Bishop of Ochrida, 

 was mysteriously murdered in the beginning of 

 November. In December Servia and Montene- 

 gro concluded a convention according to which 

 Montenegrin emigrants, of whom 8,000 settled 

 in Servia in 1889, being driven by dearth of food 

 from their own country, shall enjoy the rights of 

 Servian subjects without the delay and trouble 

 of formal naturalization. This is a step in the 

 direction of a Pan-Servian scheme that has been 

 broached, in accordance with which the Slavs of 

 the neighboring parts of Austria- Hungary and 

 Turkey, by virtue of their Servian blood, shall be 

 entitled to the rights and privileges of born 

 Servians. 



SHOT-GUNS. The history of firearms goes 

 back much further than is generally supposed. 

 In the Gentoo laws, possibly coeval with Moses, 

 there is a passage which it has been held implies 

 a knowledge of gunpowder. Quintus Curtius 

 refers to the campaign of Alexander the Great 

 in India, intimating that a tribe known as the 

 Oxydraca? could have defied Alexander had he 

 attacked them, even though he had an army of 

 men like Ajax and Achilles. " They overthrow 

 their enemies/' he says, " with tempests and 

 thunderbolts shot from their walls." A simi- 

 lar legion comes through Egyptian mythology, 

 to the effect that Hercules and Bacchus were 

 thus overthrown when they invaded India. 

 This race, it is alleged, dwelt between the Ily- 

 phasis and Ganges rivers. According to Robert 

 Norton, in 1664, ordnance and gunpowder were 

 invented in the year 58 A. D. Petrarch, in his 

 forty-eighth dialogue, writes that prior to 1374, 

 the date of his death, wall pieces, birding pieces, 

 and fowling pieces were in use. Chaucer speaks 

 of "gonnes, and the laws of Henry VIII pro- 

 hibited the ownership of hand-guns under cer- 



tain conditions. In the Tower of London there 

 are six examples of breech-loaders, one of which 

 dates from the time of Edward II, about 1471. 

 There are also examples of muzzle-loading shot- 

 guns dating at intervals through the fifteenth, 

 sixteenth, and seventeenth centuries. 



The earliest shotguns were very rude ; proba- 

 bly the military blunderbuss was at first loaded 

 with fragments of lead, and used by enthusiastic 

 sportsmen. Very soon gunmakers were called 

 upon to produce something more easily carried, 

 more easily loaded, and that would effectively 

 throw a charge of small shot. About the year 

 1700 fairly good examples of fowling pieces 

 were constructed by English gun makers, and 

 from that time to the beginning of the present 

 century they and their fellow-artisans in other 

 lands devoted their attention to the improve- 

 ment of the weapon. 



The Anglo-Saxon race are, beyond question, 

 more devoted to this kind of sport than any 

 other people on earth, and their wide distribu- 

 tion renders the manufacture and sale of sport- 

 ing arms an important branch of manufacturing 

 industry. Beginning with the match-lock, in 

 which the charge was fired by means of a fuse, 

 the gun advanced through the experiments of 

 ingenious inventors to the flint-lock, the percus- 

 sion-lock, and finally to the present so-called 

 hammerless lock. The first flint-locks consisted 

 of a small steel wheel driven by a spring motion, 

 which, when released by a pull upon the trigger, 

 revolved rapidly in contact with the edge of a 

 piece of flint ; a stream of sparks flew from the 

 wheel into the powder pan, and, unless some un- 

 toward accident occurred, the discharge of the 

 piece followed in course of time. The next im- 

 provement was the ordinary hammer-flint, in 

 which the piece of flint was held in a screw 

 clamp at the head of the hammer; the hammer 

 turned on a pivot, and, being raised to full cock, 

 was released much in the same manner as in the 

 hammers of the present day ; the edge of the 

 flint struck a piece of steel fitted so as to cover 

 the powder in the pan and keep it dry. The im- 

 pact of the flint at once uncovered the pan and 

 sent a shower of sparks into the powder. Of 

 course these appliances were all uncertain ; for 

 the powder often became damp in the pan or 

 was shaken out altogether in course of transpor- 

 tation. The wars of Napoleon and Wellington 

 were fought with flint-lock muskets, and the last 

 issue of such weapons to British troops was made 

 as late as 1842. 



Experiments looking to the use of percussion 

 or detonating powders for the discharge of fire- 

 arms were begun in America about 1830. At 

 first, primers that could be exploded by the blow 

 of the hammer were substituted for the loose 

 powder in the pan, the old mechanism being 

 substantially retained. Then the vent or touch- 

 hole was prolonged through a stout steel tube, 

 which projected upward at an angle, to receive 

 the blow of the hammer. Over the top of this 

 tube a thin copper cap containing a detonating 

 charge was fitted, and the stroke of the hammer 

 insured a powerful flash within the tube, ignit- 

 ing the main charge of powder with unfailing 

 certainty, provided the gun was in good order 

 and the'powder dry. It was a vast improvement 

 upon all that had gone before, and was in gen- 



