THE GUN, AND HOW TO USE IT. 113 
good shot can, and does not unfrequently, bring down his 
object at 1000, and even at 1500 yards. Artillery have 
been silenced with it before they could come into grape- 
range; and such is its appalling force and penetration, 
that at the bloody battle of Inkerman, the Minie bullets, 
falling into the serried columns of the Russian foot, were 
found, in many instances, after the fight was ended, to have 
pierced three and four men in succession, inflicting ghastly 
and fatal wounds on all. 
To this otherwise formidable weapon, a breech-loading 
principle has been adapted in Europe; but it is as yet 
slow, incomplete, and in one, which seems hitherto to be 
admitted as the best weapon of the kind, the Enfield rifle, 
liable to clog after firing, so as to render it difficult or 
impossible to load. 
We now come to the various American patent arms, 
recently invented; and one of these I consider as, beyond 
all doubt, the best rifle ever invented, and destined to 
supersede all others, both for the chase and for actual 
warfare.—I mean Perry’s breech-loading rifle. 
I have already had occasion to speak of the revolving 
and breech-loading principle, as applied to fowling-pieces, 
and have given my conviction that. no advantage is to be 
gained by the adoption of either. On coming to consider 
the same principle, as applied to the rifle, we must dis- 
tinguish between that weapon as required for military and 
for sporting purposes; the qualifications of the two being 
widely different. 
For the former purpose, it is often necessary to fire a 
maximum number of shots, at a vast range, in a continu- 
