340 STANCHION, 01J PUXT-GUtt. 



rounded by rivals ; and therefore, in order still to 

 keep the lead, some of them have had recourse to 

 using guns that carry from one pound and a half to 

 two pounds of shot. The recoil, however, from these 

 guns is so tremendous, that most of the men who 

 used them have met with some accident or other, and 

 are therefore giving them up. The desideratum then 

 is to accomplish this with no more recoil, or risk of 

 accidents, than there is with other guns, and thus to 

 have an advantage over the host of ordinary gunners. 

 A plan was suggested to me concerning which I was, 

 for some time, bound in secrecy ; and, lest it might, 

 even now, be thought unfair for me to publish it, I 

 shall say no more upon it ; except that, although it 

 might do very well in one respect, it never would 

 answer in another. If, therefore, I was fully at 

 liberty to explain it, I should consider it a loss of 

 time to do so. 



The plan that I have adopted is as follows : 

 A pair of barrels put together so as to fire two 

 circles, each one partly eclipsed with the other : the 

 one ignited by percussion, and the other by a flint, 

 by which means the trifling difference of the two 

 separate modes of ignition makes such an immense 

 difference in the recoil, as to reduce it to a mere 

 nothing in comparison. The eclipsed part of the 

 circles, when the two barrels are fired together, puts 

 into the paper at least a fourth more shot than any 

 one barrel could be made to do; and the enormous 

 weight of metal not only gwes additional strength 



