A The Needle Gun. 
pensation of Providence for strengthening our national 
resources; and we cherish the hope that the system may 
be kept secret, until the great part which it is destined to 
play in history may couple it with the glory of the Prussian 
arms and the extension of the empire.” 
This was as long ago as 1841. In 1865, Prussia possessed 
660,000 of these guns, and was able to turn out more than 
100,000 a year at the Royal arsenals. 
Perhaps the most surprising part of the story is the 
indifference of the Austrian officers who must, during the 
Danish campaign, have had abundant opportunity of 
acquainting themselves with its advantages. The value of 
the repeating rifles employed by the Americans in their 
civil war seems to have been equally neglected. True, the 
march of science in improving the instruments of death 
has been wonderfully rapid. But this is only a reason why 
England should be ever on the watch to avail herself of 
every improvement as the necessity of retaining her high 
place among the nations. 7 
Many are the stories that have been freely circulated 
about this weapon. We have given an outline of what is 
vouched for as its correct history. We can scarcely err in 
adding an extract from a recent publication, cautioning the 
reader to accept it cum grano salts :— 
‘Tt is well known to be the produce of the long study and per- 
severance of an English officer who, while stationed at a solitary 
outpost in Canada, amused his leisure hours with experiments in 
the rough construction of a substitute for the rifle which he had 
damaged by letting it drop down a precipice while in pursuit of a 
bear. It was almost by accident that the discovery became pal. 
pable to the solitary hunter in the woods. But no sooner did it 
become manifest to his senses than he resigned his commission 
in the army, returned to Europe, and, as a matter of course, 
hurried to the War-office with his invention, certain of its adop- 
tion in the English army, from its evident superiority over the 
old-fashioned weapons now in use. For more than a year was 
the inventor kept in suspense, as the Enfield rifle met him at 
every turn. He was bandied about from one official to another 
during all this time, merely to be told at last that the Government 
did not feel disposed to alter the principle of the arms employed. 
It was then that in disgust he brought his invention to Paris, and 
by even a more bitter mockery of fate than in London, he 
obtained an interview with the Emperor, who listened with the 
greatest interest to the description of the gun, examined the 
plans and sections brought by the officer, much questioned the 
Pea * 
