768 The Shot-Gun. 



MANTON FLINT-LOCK. 



gun-makers of less note. We give an illustration of the Manton 

 fowling-piece, showing his well-known pattern hammers and cocks, 

 the water-tight flash-pan, and his gravitating stops. Joseph Man- 

 ton, although he received the extraordinarily high price of seventy 

 guineas for his best guns, failed several times, and died poor. 

 This is accounted for partly by the losses he sustained in lawsuits 

 respecting his patents. He was buried in Kensington Cemetery, 

 and a monument bearing his epitaph, composed by Colonel Hawker, 

 gives the date of his death — 29th June, 1835, aged sixty-nine — and 

 eulogizes his work as a practical gun-maker and inventor." 



Between 1807 and 1825, several inventors endeavored to replace 

 the uncertain and slow fire of the flint-lock by the surer and quicker 

 ignition given by the explosion of a fulminate. Several devices, such 

 as "detonating tubes " placed in the touch-hole and armed with ful- 

 minate, fulminate placed in the bottom of the cartridge and exploded 

 by the perforation of a needle, and fulminate inclosed between paper 

 or metallic foil, were tried, till the well-known nipple and copper cap 

 was devised about 18 18, an invention which is claimed by Colonel 

 Hawker, who showed this plan first to Joseph Manton. 



In 1836, Lefaucheux, of Paris, invented his pin-fire cartridge and 

 his breech-loader. I place the cartridge first, for breech-loaders, 

 too numerous and varied to mention, had been invented before ; but 

 the modern breech-loader owes its hearty approval of sportsmen to 

 the admirable invention of the Lefaucheux cartridge, with its stout, 

 unyielding flanged base, without which, or its equivalent in the 

 Pottet central-pin cartridge of 1856, the breech-loader would never 

 have had the extensive use it now deservedly enjoys. 



