EVOLUTION OF GUNS AND RIFLES 
first mention of it in an English book is that in 1594, by Sir Hugh Plat, who, 
in his “Jewel House of Art and Nature,’’ describes a pistol with a grooved 
barrel as shooting accurately to 160 yards, but without remarking that 
the grooves are spiral, not straight. The difficulty in loading rifles, caused 
by the tight fit of the ball in the grooves (necessary to spin them) and the 
accumulation of fouling from the powder, hindered their general adop- 
tion for many years, but on the Continent for shooting the larger game 
and for target practice, in which the need for rapid loading was not great, 
the rifle was at once taken into favour and gradually improved. Thus at 
Berne, in 1563, complaint was made of the unfairness of using rifles in 
competition with smooth bores for target shooting. 
The advantage which would be gained by inserting the charge by an 
opening in the breech was not lost sight of in the sixteenth century. The 
system had very early been applied to cannon, but with the increasing 
power of firearms was becoming more and more impracticable, the especial 
difficulty being that there was no means of preventing the leakage of fire 
from the joints of the breech. Yet the thoughts of inventors and gunsmiths 
always turned to such a system, and no age failed to make its contribution 
to the endeavour. But the solution of the problem was not yet due. 
II 
The wheel lock was not long without a rival. The idea of adapting 
to firearms the ordinary method of obtaining fire from flint and steel 
led to the production of the first form of flint-lock, the snap-haunce. 
This was a Spanish invention. A small flint of squared form with a 
bevelled edge in front being screwed tightly between jaws in the 
upper part of the cock, was brought, on the trigger being pulled, 
into collision with a piece of steel, so throwing sparks into the pan 
and firing the piece. The steel was on an arm, hinged on the further 
side of the pan from the cock. The cover of the pan was first pushed 
to one side, and the steel was then lowered into position, with its edge 
on the top of the pan, where it was ready to be struck by the flint on the 
release of the cock. Weapons on this principle were made as early as 1520, 
but they were not common till the latter part of the sixteenth century. 
In the improved flint-lock, the hammer struck by the flint was in one 
piece with the cover of the pan: hence the latter was protected until the 
actual moment of firing. This marked a great advance, but for a long 
287 
