344 STANCHION, OR PUNT-GUN. 



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 un- 

 fair for me to publish it, I shall say no more upon it ; 

 except that, although it might do very well in one re- 

 spect, 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 

 lay 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 re- 

 coil, 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 gives ad- 

 ditional strength to the double discharge, but also to 

 either barrel when you fire them separately, which, of 

 course, you have the option of doing ; and therefore 

 you are never obliged to discharge an extra pound of 

 shot in waste, as with the huge single guns before al- 

 luded to. Moreover, the gun, on my plan, cuts two 

 united lanes through the birds, instead of wasting half 

 the shot in the water, and in the air, which is the case 

 when the charge is contained in one large circle. In 



