EVOLUTION OF GUNS AND RIFLES 
I 
T he development of firearms has been a long process as man 
counts time. It has taken many generations. The records of the 
subject are incomplete; for firearms, as an invention, began 
somewhat earlier than printing. Yet they are of very recent 
groAvth in the history of mankind. What is a period of seven 
hundred years compared to the unnumbered ages during which 
men slew their prey with stone and stick, javelin and arrow, knife and 
sword, during which the arts of hunting with dogs, snaring and netting 
were developed and brought to a high pitch of perfection ? 
The history of firearms necessarily begins with that of gunpowder. 
Incendiary mixtures had been used in war for centuries before projectiles 
were impelled by explosives. Chinese fireworks and Greek fire were alarm- 
ing and dangerous, but of limited use. The second Council of the Lateran, 
in 1139, in vain laid under anathema all persons who made igneous com- 
positions for military purposes, and it may be noted that the same Council 
condemned with no more effect the deadly and odious arts of cross -bowmen 
and archers. Our want of precise knowledge of the origin of gunpowder 
is presumably due to the perpetual danger incurred by the early chemists 
of being accused of practising unholy magic. The English monk, Roger 
Bacon, described its composition in elaborately cryptic language before 
1249 in his “de Secretis.” In his “Opus Tertium,’’ written about 1266 by 
order of Pope Clement IV, since concealment was no longer necessary, 
he wrote a clear description of “ the powder known in divers places, 
composed of saltpetre, charcoal, and sulphur,” and describes its blinding 
flash and stunning noise when exploded. He speaks of the knowledge of 
gunpowder as having by that time spread to many quarters. It is not clear 
whether he looked on it as being anything more than a destructive and 
terrifying explosive. Yet if some early chemist experienced its explosion 
in a mortar, as is likely enough, a hint would thereby have been given 
as to its possible use for projecting missiles. However this may be, the 
most rudimentary form of the gun appears to have been that of an iron 
pot. It is on record that at Rouen in 1338 there was in the arsenal an iron 
weapon called “ pot de fer ” for propelling bolts, together with saltpetre 
and sulphur to make powder for it. In the manuscript entitled “ De Officiis 
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