On Gun Accidents. 373 



easily prevented, if proper caution had been used." But show me 

 the man who is always on his guard, and you will show me a being 

 that has never yet existed. The fact is, a gun is certainly the most 

 dangerous weapon a man handles ; and a gun accident happens 

 always instantaneously, and without the slightest warning, and is, 

 moreover, if not fatal, sure to carry away a limb. Most other 

 accidents are, in some little degree, foreshadowed, and time is given 

 often for escape j but not so with firearms. And when we consider 

 that weapons from which a serious accident can result in half-a- 

 dozen different ways are continually in the hands of one half of 

 the male population in every civilized land, the only wonder to me 

 is that we do not hear of ten times more accidents happening than 

 we do now. 



We do not so often hear of an accident, at least in England, 

 happening from the bursting of a gun-barrel j but in Sweden 

 where every blacksmith is also a gunsmith after his own fashion, 

 and a barrel is never proved the case is different. Some years ago 

 one of my fellows had a gun burst in his hand ; and when he went 

 into the Carlstad Hospital to have the wound dressed, the surgeon 

 told him that this was (I think) the sixth accident of the same kind 

 that had come before him within the last month. It was in the 

 spring, when the capercally were playing, and every peasant is a 

 poacher, and all sorts of old spouts are brought into use. In this 

 case there was no wonder at the gun bursting, for when I examined 

 the barrel after the accident, I found that the breech plug was not 

 screwed in, but just shoved in like a cork ; and I fancy this was the 

 case with many others of these homespun barrels. 



I have had four guns burst in my hand the one a gingerbread 

 German walking-stick thing, in which the charge lay half way up 

 the barrel. I could never discover where the barrel flew to ; the 

 stick remained in my hand. The three others were good English 

 twist, and they did not fly, but only opened and bulged. I met 

 with no accident. I knew well how all these three barrels burst. 

 One was stuffed up with snow, the other with mud, which had 

 accidentally come into the muzzle ; in the other, the wadding in 



