THE GUN, AND HOW TO USE IT. Ill 



pellet of shot, all combined to render it inefficient and un- 

 popular. 



It was soon found, moreover, that it was the weight 

 and not the length of the barrel that did the work that 

 a half rotation, or, as some insist, a third, within the barrel, 

 gives all the rotatory motion to the ball which is desirable ; 

 and lastly, that weight in the ball itself is necessary for dis- 

 tant firing correctly, independent of the fact that an ounce 

 bullet, inflicting a wound not of necessity mortal, will disable 

 a man or animal, where one of 120 to the pound will be 

 carried off, harmlessly for the time, in the very vitals. 



With this came the first change. The short ounce-ball 

 yager rifle was adopted generally on the prairies against 

 large quadrupeds, and was found to outrange the small 

 piece infinitely, and, with equally good shooting, to plant 

 its balls as accurately. 



For a long time the double-barrelled English London- 

 made sporting rifles were the ne plus ultra of the weapon, 

 placing both their ponderous balls with extraordinary 

 powers of penetration in the same spot at three hundred 

 yards, and doing their work fatally at twice that dis- 

 tance. 



During the period of European improvements in this 

 arm, science made no advance in America, save in what 

 may be called the frivolities and fripperies of the art. 

 Target-shooting from rests, with telescope sights, patent- 

 loading muzzles, and other niceties, very neat, and doubt- 

 less telling also in the practice-ground, but wholly useless 

 and ineffective in the field, came into vogue with all the 

 rifle-clubs and companies of nearly all the original thirteen 



