A short Sketch of the Progress of Fire-arms.

The first clear notice which we have of rifles is in the year 1498, nearly 120 years after the invention of gunpowder was known to Europe.  The Chinese, I believe, claim the invention 3000 years before the Creation.  The first rifle-maker was one Zugler, in Germany, and his original object appears to have been merely to make the balls more ragged, so as to inflict more serious wounds; a result produced before that time by biting and hacking the balls.  This appears clearly to have been the intention, inasmuch as the cuts were made perfectly straight in the first instance.  The accurate dates of the introduction of the various twists I have not been able to ascertain.

I can find no mention of breech-loading arms before the reign of Henry VIII., since which time they have been constantly used in China and other parts of the East.  In 1839, they were, I understand, extensively used in Norway.  A breech-loading carbine, lately brought across to this country from America as the invention of Mr. Sharpe, was patented by a Mr. Melville, of London, as far back as 1838.  I understand Mr. Sharpe’s carbine was tried at Woolwich not long ago, and found to clog, owing to the expansion of the metal from consecutive firing.  Nor has any breech-loading weapon hitherto introduced been able to make its way into extensive practical use, although the Americans have constantly used them in their navy for some years past.  To return to ancient times.—­There is a matchlock in the Tower of London with one barrel and a revolving breech cylinder which was made in the fifteenth century, and there is a pistol on a similar plan, and dating from Henry VIII., which may be seen in the Rotunda at Woolwich.  The cylinders of both of these weapons were worked by hand.

The old matchlock, invented in 1471, gave way to a substitute scarcely less clumsy, and known by the initiated as the wheel-lock, the ignition taking place by the motion of the steel wheel against a fixed flint placed in the midst of the priming.  This crude idea originated in 1530, and reigned undisputed until the invention of the common old flint and steel, about the year 1692, when this latter became lord paramount, which it still remains with some infatuated old gentlemen, in spite of the beautiful discovery of the application of fulminating powder, as a means of producing the discharge.

Mr. Forsyth patented this invention in 1807, but, whether from prejudice or want of perfection in its application, no general use was made of the copper cap until it was introduced among sportsmen by Mr. Egg, in 1818, and subsequently Mr. J. Manton patented his percussion tubes for a similar purpose.  The use of the copper cap in the army dates 1842, or nearly a quarter of a century after its manifest advantages had been apparent to the rest of the community.

Previous to this invention it was impossible to make revolving weapons practically available for general use.