406 SPOETING RIFLES AND AMMUNITION 



take up a position not logically defensible, for, using my own 

 double (ejector) rifle, I can, by holding two spare cartridges 

 between the fingers of my left hand, put off four shots as fast 

 as the user of any magazine weapon can do. But the mere 

 action of reloading reduces the tendency to rapid and uncon- 

 sidered firing. 



Few things in the history of the sporting rifle are more 

 curious than the almost total cessation of advance made which 

 followed the invention of the express principle, and which 

 lasted for something like twenty years. Of course, I must 

 not be supposed to mean that there were no minor improve- 

 ments, but on broad lines the seventies and eighties were a 

 blank in the history of the sportsman's weapon. 



Thus the "Old Shekarry" (Major Levison), writing in '67, 

 advocated the use of the Westley - Richards breech-loader, 

 but he recommended the 12 -bore rifle for general use, 

 although only the previous year he seems to have used a 

 "Whitworth small-bore" with deadly effect at chamois, and 

 at ranges which would be unusually long even at the present 

 day. Only a year or two later. Captain Forsyth revoked 

 everything he had written in his book on sporting rifles 

 (published 'Q6 or '67), and unhesitatingly advocated the -500 

 express ; and for twenty good years the '500 express, perhaps 

 the poorest of all rifles, ruled the roost. In those twenty 

 years improvements were made in actions and similar matters 

 of detail only. In fact, the only inventions of real importance 

 falling within that period were those of the shot-and-ball gun 

 and of the orthoptic sight (in its modern form). 



With the late eighties came a revolution in military rifles 

 everywhere, and small-bore (under one- third of an inch in 

 diameter) weapons were taken into use by all the Great 

 Powers. The rifles burned various nitro- compounds (miscalled 

 " smokeless " powders in England alone), which exerted high 

 pressures on the breech of the rifle, but also ensured high 

 initial velocity and low trajectory. Moreover, the cartridges 

 were much lighter than the old kind — an important point to 

 the soldier. These new military rifles were from the first 

 looked upon askance by the practical sportsman, who at once 

 correctly attributed to those defects, which they have since 

 been found in practice to have — viz., Want of shock and 



