PUNT-GUNS. 399 



highly inconvenient, for many reasons known to 

 fowlers, but not to gunmakers. 



" 2nd. The drop-down action adopted in this gun 

 (the stock takes the recoil of the charge) is most 

 unsafe, and I hoped, after the couple of bad acci- 

 dents we have had, such actions had been dis- 

 carded. 



" 3rd. The steel cases, which the writer tells me 

 can be loaded as wanted out fowling, are, in actual 

 practice, the worst of plans. They have to be 

 most carefully cleaned out after every shot to 

 prevent a miss-fire, and every atom of rust (and 

 who can avoid plenty of such when shooting in salt 

 or even in fresh water ?) that may be on them 

 scratches and spoils the chamber of the barrel. 

 Steel cases soon wear smaller from work and clean- 

 ing, and then obtain room in the barrel to expand 

 or crack, and so stick. Loading steel cases is for 

 all the world similar to charging a muzzle-loader, 

 and more tedious. 



" 4th. The heavy bands are of great weight, and 

 useless ; the sliding pin for the recoil-spring should 

 work in a neat loop forged with and on the under- 

 neath part of the barrel, such as was used for twenty 

 years, in a gun nearly four times as powerful, by 

 Colonel Hawker. 



" 5th. A charge of twelve ounces to a gun 

 weighing a hundred pounds is ridiculously small. 

 A muzzle-loader of that weight would shoot half a 

 pound more, and its original cost would be a half 

 less.* From their utter ignorance of the punts they 



* The cost of a muzzle-loading punt-gun of best quality and 

 workmanship, charge, i f Ibs. ; total weight, 1 50 Ibs. ; length of barrel, 



