Page:Popular Science Monthly Volume 92.djvu/123

 Popular Science Monthly Firing Bullets from a Slot at the End of a Shotgun

FROM the time British sportsmen learned that hitting flying things was entirely possible, there has been a hundred years of endeavor to make a shotgun fire its shot charges more compactly, to the end that the density of the "pattern" be sufl!icient to insure hits even at very long range.

Now comes an inventor with a device to make a shotgun spread its charge even more than the normal "cylinder" barrel, and not only to make it spread, but to produce a spread of a certain shape so as to increase the chances for a hit.

For war usage/ this inventor has produced for the shotgun, a muzzle flattened horizontally, until it is nothing more than a slot of a width equal to the diameter of the buckshot to be used; and of course running horizontally as the gun is held by the shooter. The result, says the inventor, is a "pattern," made with twelve buckshot, fourteen inches high by eight feet wide at a distance of thirty yards. In other words, at this range the gun shoots a horizontal line of round bullets, not one of which is higher or lower than seven inches from the average, all traveling in a "line of skirmishers," eight feet wide. Were men charging the trench at yard intervals, which is not now true, three or four of them would be hit with a bullet each. The device can be applied to cannon also, the load being changed to a charge of loose leaden bul- lets and the muzzle flattened out to allow them to pass out in a horizontal line only.

For game shoot- ing, what is needed is a Httle lever for quickly changing the horizontal po-

��107

���de is flattened out so that the bullets issue in a horizontal line

��sition to a vertical one. Where the crossing duck or quail would have to run the gauntlet of a shot charge spread out, say, fifteen feet from east to west, the walked up game, rising suddenly, or the soaring duck, would call for a vertical position of the flattened muzzle.

���A cobblestone fireplace with a brick chimney built into the wall of the veranda is an attractive innovation

��An Open Fireplace On the Veranda — What Next?

N Los Angeles, Cal., the hottest day is followed by a cool evening. Hence the open- air fireplace is not so incongru- ous as it seems. It has been built into the cor- ner of the veranda, the low walls of which are of cob- blestones. The fireplace itself is of the same construc- tion, with a brick chimney extending high enough into the air to conduct the smoke cloud- ward.

Here on cool evenings a bright log fire is built, which makes it possible for the res- idents to enjoy the out-of-doors.

�� �