Introduction. 



ever their knowledge of the subject, are rarely well 

 acquainted with the names of the persons who have written 

 upon it. Moreover, in the history of firearms it is the date, 

 and in technical matters the fact, which is all-important, 

 the personality of the author being frequently of no moment 

 whatever. Learned persons may at once recognise Walter 

 in Valturius and Greaves in Gravius, but learned persons 

 are not likely to take so much interest in guns and shooting 

 as are class journalists, technical instructors, and gun- 

 makerspersons who are not learned in the dry-as-dust 

 sense. Another trouble with names, particularly foreign 

 names, is to recognise the important designation: Alenzo 

 Martinez del Espinar would, in accordance with the British 

 Museum rules of indexing, have to be sought in the 

 catalogue under D, the portion of the name least likely to 

 be remembered. With some double names, particularly 

 those of Austrian writers, it is customary to place the 

 Christian, or added, name after the family name a process 

 of inversion which human powers of recollection often 

 perform automatically, and after a short time recall Alvarez 

 Perez as Perez Alvarez. In order to save the time of the 

 student, in the alphabetical list of authors some authors 

 have more than one entry, owing to the persistence with 

 which the added name surged up into memory, whilst the 

 correct index name could not be recollected. 



Clearly, for the student of history classification by dates 

 is likely to be more convenient. If the student wishes to 

 learn what was known of firearms in the seventeenth 

 century, it is better to turn to a catalogue of the works 

 published at that time than to search through many lists 

 of unknown names, and often, upon choosing a writer, 

 consult the work only to find that it belongs to another 

 period. In the same way the language in which books are 

 written is of minor importance, and the size of the book 



