THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
but says that it was almost unknown in England till Mr Lang, of Cockspur 
Street, took it up in 1851. Its real success, no doubt, began with the per- 
fecting of the pinfire cartridge. Englishmen are slow to bless ideas to which 
they are unaccustomed, and the most was made of the imperfections of the 
breechloader. Owing, it would appear, mainly to the need for elastic 
wadding of substantial thickness between the powder and the shot not 
being understood, the breechloader at first required a substantially larger 
charge of powder to give the same penetration as the muzzle-loader. The 
extra charge was variously estimated at from ^ to | of a drachm. Com- 
parative trials of the shooting of breechloaders and muzzleloaders were 
conducted by “ The Field ” in 1858 and 1859, all the guns being of English 
make. It appeared from these that the breechloaders, which were all 
pinfire guns, required nearly 10 per cent more powder than the muzzle- 
loaders, and gave slightly less close shooting, and that they were, on the 
whole, decidedly heavier. In each trial guns of 12, 13, 15 and 16 bore 
were fired. The cartridge cases used at this period were mainly of French 
make, but it was not long before Messrs Eley manufactured them success- 
fully for the English market. The advantages of the breechloader, one of 
the chief of which was the rapid and simple removal of the charge from 
the gun when safety required it, undeniably outweighed its drawbacks, 
and it rapidly became popular, although, as always happens, some sports- 
men of the old school were never induced to give up their favourite muzzle- 
loaders. The breechloader was such a revolution that we can hardly be 
surprised at the keeper who, in a contemporary number of “Punch” 
(1863), exclaims “ He’s bin and broke ’is gun the werry fust shot.” 
The muzzleloader, indeed, died hard. The objections to its rival were 
stoutly upheld and were catalogued by a writer in 1860. First came the 
comparative weakness of shooting and consequent shortness of range, 
due, it was considered, mainly to the breech being of a flat shape instead 
of cupped, for the accusation of weak shooting was not devoid of foundation, 
but we may note that the same had been urged with less grounds against 
the percussion system when first introduced. Next, the extra weight of 
the breechloader was a draw-back. It was accused of suffering more 
wear and tear; of liability for the mechanism to go wrong; of heavy 
recoil ; and of the action being liable to be weakened by the constant escape 
of gas at the breech. The labour of loading cartridges at home, and the 
expense of buying them ready loaded, were also objected to; so was the 
supposed need for carrying them in a metal case with a separate corn- 
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