THE GUN, AND HOW TO CHOOSE IT. 41 



subject, and to conform to the progressive improvement of 

 the arm, or to fall behind the genius of the age. 



It cannot be, perhaps, denied that, in point of force 

 and range, the flint and steel had some advantage over 

 the percussion fowling-piece ; for the charge being more 

 slowly, was more thoroughly ignited, so that nearly every 

 grain of powder in the load was burned before the shot 

 was expelled from the barrel ; whereas it is now not by 

 any means uncommon to find as one may clearly observe 

 by firing a gun over new-fallen snow at least one half of 

 the quantity driven out of the barrel, unconsumed, and 

 of course useless. 



The other advantages of quickness, certainty of dis- 

 charge, sureness in all weather, in fogs or rain, or at sea, 

 accuracy of aim, absence of smoke from the priming which 

 often, especially in damp days, prevented a second shot, 

 and instantaneousness of explosion, so vastly counterbal- 

 ance the only existing drawback, that no man in his senses 

 would think of using a flint-and-steel gun, when another 

 could be procured. 



Even in military service, where the obstinacy of rou- 

 tine and the economy of governments always cause im- 

 provements to be most slowly adopted, and old exploded 

 systems to be most pertinaciously upheld, the percussion 

 system has every where been adopted ; and in view of this 

 and the other improvements, as to range and accuracy, in 

 the new arms, it is not too much to say that any body of 

 men armed with the old soldier's musket, the far-famed 

 brown Bess, of the commencement of the present century, 

 must be annihilated in spite of all advantages of courage. 



