THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
From improved barrels we proceed to improvements in locks, taking 
final shape in the hammerless gun. This is perhaps something of a mis- 
nomer, for most patterns of hammerless locks have concealed hammers. 
The idea of locks with internal mechanism is ancient enough. In the case 
of hammerless rifle actions, a compressed spiral spring drives the striker 
violently forward, so that the end of it strikes the cap. Such mechanism 
was found to be unsuited to double-barrelled guns, which still have double 
locks of the type in which concealed hammers take the place of the outside 
hammers formerly used. These entered the field of practical use soon after 
1870. They were cocked at first by the movement of the lever to open the 
gun, but later by that of the barrels. The latter principle has prevailed 
and is now almost universal. Needham in the “ fifties,” Daw in the 
‘ ‘ sixties , ’ ’ and Mur cott in 1 870 , produced hammerless actions ; that of Gibbs 
and Pitt, perhaps the first really practical hammerless action, soon followed; 
the Anson and Deeley action, introduced by Westley Richards, was pro- 
duced in 1875, and has, with various modifications of detail, been thoroughly 
successful. Other systems have been produced. The hammerless gun, 
like all other developments, at first met with much opposition and pre- 
judiced criticism, but its inherent merits soon prevailed. It had at first 
its defects. No half-cock could well be provided, and arrangements for 
bolting the trigger did not fully ensure safety; but later the fitting of addi- 
tional intercepting bolts, to prevent the hammer, if released by a jar, 
from reaching the striker, gave complete safety. Intercepting bolts on the 
same principle may be found fitted to flint-lock guns of a century ago. 
Hammerless guns are, in fact, safer than those with hammers. There is 
no longer the chance of the thumb slipping off the hammer in cocking or 
uncocking, nor that of an accidental discharge from the hammer being 
pulled back by a twig or other accidental projection. Exception was taken 
at first to the absence of hammers on the ground that these rendered easier 
a true alignment of the barrels. But, in fact, they served no such purpose 
as that of a backsight. The hammerless gun has been found to be more 
convenient in all ways, as well as safer and more elegant in appearance, 
than its predecessors; and guns with hammers, though many exist which 
have years of life in them yet, are slowly vanishing into the limbo from 
which ultimately emerge curious specimens for museums. 
With the hammerless gun there came the automatic ejection of the 
fired cartridge case. This first appears in Needham’s hammerless gun of 
1874, which contained selective mechanism for ejecting either or both 
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