THE GUN, AND HOW TO USE IT. 111 
pellet of shot, all combined to render it inefficient and un- 
popular. 
It was soon found, moreover, that it was the weight . 
and not the length of the barrel that did the work—that 
a half rotation, or, as some insist, a third, within the barrel, 
gives all the rotatory motion to the ball which is desirable ; 
and lastly, that weight in the ball itself is necessary for dis- 
tant firing correctly, independent of the fact that an ounce 
bullet, inflicting a wound not of necessity mortal, will disable 
a man or animal, where one of 120 to the pound will be 
carried off, harmlessly for the time, in the very vitals. 
With this came the first change. The short ounce-ball 
yager rifle was adopted generally on the prairies against 
large quadrupeds, and was found to outrange the small 
piece infinitely, and, with equally good shooting, to plant 
its balls as accurately. 
For a long time the double-barrelled English London- 
made sporting rifles were the ne plus ultra of the weapon, 
placing both their ponderous balls with extraordinary 
powers of penetration in the same spot at three hundred 
yards, and doing their work fatally at twice that dis- 
tance. 
During the period of European improvements in this 
arm, science made no advance in America, save in what 
may be called the frivolities and fripperies of the art. 
Target-shooting from rests, with telescope sights, patent- 
loading muzzles, and other niceties, very neat, and doubt- 
less telling also in the practice-ground, but wholly useless 
and ineffective in the field, came into vogue with all the 
rifle-clubs and companies of nearly all the original thirteen 
