The Needle Gun. 3 
Nor can we join in all the denunciations of our official 
slowness to adopt a new arm in face of the fact, that at 
present only one nation has armed itself with this weapon. 
At the same time, the superiority of breech-loaders has 
been-so attested by experience, that we may approve the 
decision to supply our troops with guns of this kind as 
rapidly as possible. It is far from certain that the needle- 
gun is the best of its kind. Nota few judges condemn it 
as clumsy and insufficient—far surpassed by many other 
models that we may easily employ. It is freely stated 
that the composition of the fulminating substance has been 
kept a secret by the Prussian Government, and that to 
this cause is to be attributed the reluctance of others to 
use it. We believe it to consist of 52°5 of chlorate of 
potassa, 29°5 antimony, and 18 of sulphur. Sucha com- 
position would, indeed, afford a terribly explosive material, 
but a good deal of gas would result, and this is found to 
be the case in using the needle-gun, a fact that accounts 
for the Prussian soldiers resting it on the hip to fire, and 
further accounts for its having been rejected in England on 
account of the officers coat who fired it having been 
injured from this cause. It is interesting to remember that 
the idea of a breech-loader is by no means new. At the 
beginning of the century, the Great Napoleon offered a 
premium for a useful gun of this description, and one was 
actually completed for him, and rejected by his officers as 
unsatisfactory. One of the workmen of the maker of this 
failure, who had studied chemistry under the great Ber- 
thollet, watched the experiments with great interest, and 
after the reverses of the Emperor’s fortune, returned to 
Prussia, of which he was a native, and there occupied him- 
self with the subject, until, having obtained the assistance 
of competent men from the Government, he produced an 
arm satisfactory enough to have 60,000 ordered, and in 
I$4I given out to the army. His name was Dreyse, and 
it was only after several trials he was thus successful. The 
apparent extravagance of this order was defended in a 
Royal decree, the words of which will be noted with 
peculiar interest in the light of recent events. Here they 
are :— 
“ The rifled Ziindnadelgewehr is, according to our present 
conviction, the perfection of military arms, and its practical 
introduction will, doubtless, lead to its adoption in all 
branches of the service. The result of numerous experi- 
ments made us appreciate this invention as a special dis- 
Be2 
