68 DETONATING SYSTEM. 



London gunmakers will find out sooner or later, 

 that the barrel should rather be 2 feet 10 than 2 feet 

 8, or the disproportionate length of 2 feet 4, or 2 

 feet 6 ; unless absolutely required to be short, for the 

 convenience of shooting in covert. The breeching 

 should be made on purpose, and I therefore fully 

 acquit the gunmaker of any wish to impose on his 

 customers, when he hesitates to alter the average 

 of flint guns. A good heavy fourteen gauge gun 

 may be altered by means of a new breeching, or (as 

 a very inferior make-shift] with a roller screwed into 

 the touch-hole ; for either of which you must of 

 course alter your lock-plate, so that it can no more 

 be used with a flint. The way, however, to use both 

 flint and detonater on the same lock is very simple, 

 but so apt to break the hammer-bridle, that out of 

 six locks which I had altered, five of them were 

 spoiled ,by this means. Were the hammer-bridle 

 forged very strong, I have no doubt it would answer 

 perfectly well ; so that if you wished to use either 

 flint or detonater, a new lock-plate must be forged 

 on purpose. The hammers which I had put on in 

 town were for ever missing fire ; those by Mr. Par- 

 sons of Salisbury, by the trifling alteration that I 

 suggested, of placing the nipple as near as possible 

 to the touch-hole, and lining the pan all through 

 with platina, fired about eight hundred shots with 

 only about three misses fire, and were decidedly the 

 most certain of any detonating guns, or hammers, I 

 had ever used ; till at last, like all the rest, off flew 



