EVOLUTION OF GUNS AND RIFLES 
partment for each cartridge, to avoid damage or the risk of explosion. 
The weight of the cartridge cases increased the load to be carried by the 
sportsman. But the proof of the pudding is in the eating, and the rapidity 
and certainty of fire and the reduction of the sportsman’s labour in the 
field, outweighed the drawbacks until further improvements eliminated 
all cause of complaint. 
The pinfire cartridge had certain inherent disadvantages. The shooter 
had to carry an extractor, having in it a hole which could be slipped over 
the pin to afford a sure grip for pulling it out; the extractor was also pro- 
vided with a hook for the purpose of removing any part of the paper which 
might be left behind in the barrel if the cartridge tore in being pulled out, 
which it was liable to do, especially in wet weather. The cartridge might 
explode if it fell and the pin was struck in the fall. In loading, the pin had 
to be fitted into its notch, which required care. 
It now remained for a fresh step to be taken. The various needle guns 
fired the charge by a fulminating disc in the centre of the charge towards 
the base, and in 1847 Flobert had invented the system of the rim fire 
cartridge as now applied to rifles of small calibre. About 1852 Charles 
Lancaster had introduced a gas-tight cartridge with a perforated metal 
plate in the base, on the back of which was the priming, this plate being 
covered with a copper base projecting at the edges so as to give a grip for 
the extractor. Such a cartridge had merely to be placed in the chamber, 
and the priming came automatically into place opposite the striker. In 
1861 Daw introduced an improved central -fire cartridge based on the 
patent of F. E. Schneider, of Paris, which contained an ordinary 
cap in the base, set in a cup which contained an anvil, and had fireholes 
to give the flash access to the powder. The firing pin indented the cap, 
driving the fulminate against the anvil, and so producing the flame. On this 
cartridge Colonel Boxer’s cartridge for the Enfield rifie was based. The 
military authorities had for twenty years been bent on the fruitless attempt 
to produce a satisfactory breechloader with a cap put separately on the 
nipple. Useful actions on this principle had been brought out by Prince 
and by Westley Richards, but it was now at last recognized that a cartridge 
containing its own means of ignition was not necessarily dangerous. 
In 1867 Daw failed in an action against Messrs Eley, in which it was sought 
to prove that Schneider’s was a master patent covering the central -fire 
principle. The central-fire cartridge from this moment superseded the pin- 
fire, and, with improvements in detail, remains the same to-day, and has 
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