THE GUN AT HOME AND ABROAD 
65 guineas for his guns. Col. Thornton speaks of highly ornamented guns 
being made at the Versailles factory up to a value of £2,000, and saw one 
priced at 800 guineas. Indeed, he possessed a gun given him by Lord 
Rockingham which had cost £420. 
The under and over gun is the latest attempt at the improvement of the 
sporting gun. It has already been mentioned that the earliest double 
barrels were arranged with one barrel above the other, and this method 
has been occasionally revived. With double-barrel breechloaders it offered 
special difficulties, owing to the need for opening the barrels to a much 
wider angle than is the case with the ordinary arrangement. Its one 
apparent advantage is in the narrower grip which it affords to the left 
hand. This would seem, in fact, to be quite a minor matter, and apart from 
any question of fashion, there seems no reason to suppose that the “under 
and over ” offers any such advantage to the gunmaker’s customer as will 
bring about a revolution in the methods of gun construction which have 
been so long in vogue. 
To increase the rapidity of fire has always been a goal for inventors. 
Museums can show endless ancient attempts upon the problem. Pepys 
records in his diary how, in 1664, Lord Peterborough brought a new- 
fashioned gun for trial, which was designed “ to shoot off often, one after 
another, without trouble or danger and how, on another occasion, he 
saw “a gun to discharge seven times, . . . very serviceable and not a bauble.” 
A later inventor, in the following century, claimed to be able to increase 
the rate of fire of the troops from five shots in six minutes to five shots 
in one minute. This was to be done by some application of “ magnetical 
electricity,” which was also to increase the power of the charge in an 
enormous degree; but unfortunately no details are given, though the 
inventor refers to some trials which took place at the request of the Duke 
of Marlborough, in which he “ fired much oftener and put three times as 
many Balls through a Target, in the space of three Minutes, at forty 
Paces Distance, than Colonel William Cunningham could do with three 
Men of the Foot-Guards.” 
The obscuration of view by the smoke of black powder told 
heavily against rapidity of fire; there were many occasions when it was 
necessary to wait for the smoke to clear. Thus, until smokeless powders 
came into general use, there was a difficulty in fully utilizing quick-loading 
devices. The self-cocking ejector gun gave increased rapidity in loading, 
and therefore in the rate of fire, and by the use of two or three such guns 
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