EVOLUTION OF GUNS AND RIFLES 
individually before firing, but they are put five at a time into a magazine, 
which supplies them as needed for loading in the chamber. Thus in the 
course of evolution we have arrived at a point where the mere opening 
and closing of the breech takes the place of the many movements formerly 
required to load each item of the charge separately. 
The problem of applying a breech -loading system to the double barrelled 
gun was quite a different one. In this case the two barrels had to be closed 
or opened simultaneously; both the bolt and the falling block systems 
were therefore found inapplicable. The final solution was arrived at in 
France. Among firearms of the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries 
may be found examples of breechloaders having the barrels hinged at, 
or close to, the breech on either vertical or horizontal pivots. In the latter 
case, the barrel, on the release of a catch or bolt, usually on the top of the 
breech, dropped downwards, exposing the breech end. Such a mechanism 
had been patented by Pauly, and, improving on this, Lefaucheux, a gun- 
smith of Paris, brought out in the “ thirties ” a modification of this “ drop 
down ” principle, in which the hinge was horizontal, under the barrels, but 
a little distance in from the breech. By this means the breech end of the 
barrels was raised above the false breech at a convenient angle, while space 
was given for a locking bolt on the screw principle, and actuated by a lever 
underneath the fore end, to engage in a lug or lugs fixed to the underside 
of the barrel towards the breech end. The barrels were effectually held 
down, for the proportion of the explosive force tending to open the breech 
is not large. At the same time the mechanism was compact, and did not 
interfere with loading. With the self-consuming cartridge, such a breech- 
loader would have succeeded no better than others. But Lefaucheux adopted 
a non -consumable cartridge invented by Houiller, containing its own cap 
and also a plunger or pin which projected vertically through a hole in the 
upper side of the breech. This pin being struck by the hammer or cock, 
communicated the blow to the cap. The projecting pin made it easy to 
withdraw the fired cartridge case. The lever of Lefaucheux’s original 
breechloaders lay horizontally underneath the fore end and was pulled to 
the right to open the gun. It was soon found that an equally effective posi- 
tion for the lever, and one much more convenient, was that it should be 
shaped and fitted to lie under the trigger guard when closed. In this form 
the action was strong and effective. 
“ Stonehenge,” the late Mr Walsh, of “ The Field,” speaks in 1859 of 
the Lefaucheux gun as having been in use in France for about twenty years, 
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