MUZZLE-LOADERS AND BREECH-LOADERS. 165 



peculiarly adapted — the writer's remarks will be 

 mainly confined. Feeling entirely convinced, even 

 from a short experience, of their superiority in most 

 particulars, and their equality in all, he regards the 

 consequence as inevitable that they will utterly 

 supersede the old-fashioned fowling-piece; the few 

 defects that were originally alleged to exist in them 

 having been either removed or remedied, and the 

 supply of ammunition for them in this country 

 having become sufficient. They have won their 

 way slowly into public favor against the interested 

 opposition of gun-makers on one hand, and the igno- 

 rance and superstitious dread of change of gun-users 

 on the other. 



They are a French invention of forty years' 

 standing, and proved their superiority long ago ; 

 but prejudice was too strong for them, as it has been 

 for many another good thing. Their merits, never- 

 theless, slowly conquered opposition, convinced the 

 intelligent, and confounded the obstinate ; till at 

 last in England — the very hot-bed of prejudice and 

 the favorite abiding-place of antiquated ideas — there 

 are now sold fifty breech-loaders to one muzzle^ 

 loader. As they are not universally used with us, 

 the description of them will have to be somewhat 

 minute, and would be better understood if the reader 

 would take the trouble to examine one for himself. 



The best and most generally adopted of the vari- 

 ous kinds is the Lefaucheux, or some slight modi- 

 fication of it ; and to that the attention will be prin- 

 cipally directed. In this gun the breech, which in 



