EVOLUTION OF GUNS AND RIFLES 
the barrel of the gun and restored every time after loading. The process 
of loading was never without danger, especially with the double-barrelled 
gun, and accidents from the unfired barrel being left at full cock while 
the other was reloaded, or from the ignition of the powder flask, some- 
times inflicted heavy penalties for carelessness. Joseph Manton’s “ gra- 
vitating stops ” were a safeguard against the former, as, when the gun was 
in or near a vertical position, they interposed a bolt which prevented the 
hammer falling. The plan worked well; that it should have been practical 
at all shows how the conditions of shpoting have changed. Nowadays it 
would be impossible to suggest the use of a bolt which came into action 
whenever the gun was raised for a shot at an overhead bird. 
V 
The introduction of breech loading as a practical improvement in small 
arms followed the development of the percussion system. The impossi- 
bilities of one age are the commonplaces of the next. Many early endeavours 
to solve the problem had failed, but they were continued almost without 
interval. The best invention of the eighteenth century. Colonel Patrick 
Ferguson’s breech loader, an action opened and closed by a screw rising 
and falling vertically, was of some practical use. It was patented in 1776; 
and it is believed that some rifles made on this system were used in the 
American War of Independence, in which he fought with distinction. If 
so, it appears that his invention was the first breechloader to be used in 
war by British soldiers. Other inventions of the same period attained no 
success, although not wanting in ingenuity. Egg, in 1803, and Searles, in 
the same year, took out patents for breech -loading systems. In 1814, J. S. 
Pauly, of Paris, patented a gun in which the charge was ignited by the heat 
of compressed air, and also a breech -loading action depending on a hinged 
lever which was lifted to allow the cartridge to be inserted. The first step 
towards overcoming the difficulties caused by the escape of gas from the 
breech was taken in 1816 when Pauly patented the use of a plug of lead 
or copper placed between the powder and the breech so as to give way 
under the force of the explosion and to cover the crevices of the joint and 
act as a gas check. In the breech -loading needle gun invented by Dreyse 
in 1838, and adopted for the Prussian Army in 1841, a self-consuming 
cartridge was used; with this much inconvenience was caused by the escape 
of gas from the breech, so that the soldiers preferred to fire it from the 
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