EVOLUTION OF GUNS AND RIFLES 
and to force the priming, when fired, to take effect in the direction 
of the charge. Thus, a small quantity of the detonating mixture 
was placed at the bottom of a hole in which the plunger worked and 
which communicated with the charge; the plunger being struck by the 
falling of the cock ignited the fulminate and fired the charge. Such 
mechanical methods, however, gave much trouble. Many improvements, 
practical and otherwise, were produced, as that the fulminating mixture, 
instead of being loose, should be enclosed in paper, or in metallic covers 
of tube form or otherwise, or merely rolled into balls. The difficulty was 
finally solved by the invention of the copper cap containing the fulminate 
in its crown. The touch -hole, instead of issuing horizontally at the side of 
the breech, was brought upwards and inclined backwards, and terminated 
in a nipple on which the cap fitted. The cap was ignited by the blow of a 
hollow -ended cock, or hammer as we may now call it: for the hammer 
proper to the flint lock had disappeared, and it was not long before what 
had hitherto been called the cock began to usurp its name. It is difficult 
to assign among several claimants the original invention of the cap. Egg, 
the gunmaker, among others, claimed to have originated its use. It seems 
clear that Joe Manton, at that time the acknowledged leader of the gun- 
making trade, who had a successful patent system for using the fulminate 
enclosed in a tube laid horizontally with its end against the touch -hole, 
tried the system of a cap suggested to him by Colonel Hawker; and that 
this method proved such a success that, not being patented, it soon came 
into general use, to the exclusion of all other systems. Colonel Hawker, 
however, maintained till at least 1838 the opinion that primers or tubes, 
whether of copper, as used by Manton and Lancaster, or of steel, as used 
by Westley Richards, were far more to be depended on than caps, especially 
for shooting afloat or in wet weather. In 1834 Greener speaks of Joyce’s 
caps as excellent, and says that the use of flint guns is now nearly exploded. 
It was long considered that the flint lock shot more strongly and with less 
recoil and pressure than the detonating lock. Accordingly, it remained 
for some time a common custom to bore a vent hole in the breech of per- 
cussion guns, a fashion useless and wasteful of the energy of the powder. 
The percussion lock had a great advantage in firing a quick shot, or at 
night, and the allowance necessary in shooting at a moving object was, 
speaking generally, only half that made necessary by the slow ignition of 
the flint lock. Colonel Hawker’s deliberate opinion, as regards punt guns, 
was that “ in firing a heavy charge among a large flock of birds, the flint 
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