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560 day. Grasped by the whole hand, with the thumb having a firm hold by means of the circular cut upon the stock, a strong pressure brought back the cock to the priming. This arm was also fired from a rest, which, in fact, continued in use up to the time of James II., the weight of muskets being usually from fourteen to twenty pounds. At the same period a smaller weapon, called a “Caliver,” or “Arquebuse de Calibre,” from all being made the same bore, so that the same bullet would fit them, came into use, and was an important step in the right direction. This arm differed only from the “Muskett” just given in size, and in being fired without a rest: the mode of ignition was the same.

In the early part of the sixteenth century, another way of firing was invented, namely, the wheel-lock. Its mechanism is so well described in a note to Grose’s “History of the English Army,” vol. xiii. p. 154, that I quote it at length. “It is,” he says, “by Father Daniel, who had collected various particulars about different sorts of arms:—

The sketch here given is taken from a pistol in the possession of Mr. Townley Parker, Cuerden Hall, Lancashire; the key of which Father Daniel speaks, is called the spanner; it would also act as a turnscrew, and, being hollow, contained the priming-powder.

The wheel-lock being the immediate predecessor of the flint-lock, so well-known to us, and only discontinued in the English army in 1840, is well worth careful study.

It appears, however, that the wheel-lock easily got out of order, and was difficult to repair in the field; hence their use was not general, and we find the match-lock still the usual mode of firing in the seventeenth century.

In Grose’s “English Army” there are figures of the manual exercise of the Musketeers at the end of the seventeenth century, showing but little improvement upon the harquebus or caliver of the previous one; the trigger, indeed, is improved, and covered by a trigger-guard, but the rest—the match and the musket—are almost the same.

An invention which doubled the use of the musket now was introduced. To Germany we owe the flint-lock, as well as the wheel-lock. Rude and clumsy indeed at first, with its upright steel, the “Schnapp-hahn,” or literally snap-cock, when it once gained a footing, drove the match lock completely out of the field, and held its ground for upwards of 150 years.

The drawing is from Hewitt, and he says “it is of German manufacture, and has the Nuremberg stamp on the barrel: its date about 1640.”

The improvement of causing the steel to cover the priming, and to fly open by the striking of the cock against it, was soon made; and at the beginning of the eighteenth century the flint-lock was in general use in the English army, and differed but little from that with which our troops were armed up to 1840: it was a little heavier, and a little clumsier, perhaps, but that was all the difference, considered only as a fire-arm. It was not till the latter year that English soldiers of the line were armed with a percussion-musket, which, however, only held its place for about a dozen years, when the advance of science and the better arms of our neighbours compelled us to replace it; first, partially by the Minié, and afterwards entirely by the Enfield.

Our subject, however, ends with the introduction of the flint-lock: the subsequent improvements belong to modern times.

The various theories of gunnery introduced by Tartaglia, Leonardo da Vinci, Robbins, and others, and more recently developed by Delvigne, Minié, and Whitworth, are deeply interesting to a nation of Riflemen; and when the watchword of our rifle-makers and rifle-users seems to be “Forward and onward,” a fuller study of the several steps from the rude “hande-gonne” of the fourteenth century to the Whitworth of to-day cannot fail to be amusing and instructive to all who love the rifle. P. L.