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. 
Tt 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, 
