May.—A novel safety guard, very likely to break the finger: sure to do it if on an English gun. Breech-loader: central fire, the same as now made by Lancaster.
Loger, barrel-maker.—Bars faggoted 6 + 2, and so formed to imitate laminated steel.
Dufour.—All breech-loading guns; but all work of the first class.
Juelle Magana, barrel-maker, St. Etienne.—Barrels well fitted and figure varying, but not possessing the regularity observed in the Belgian barrels.
Chapellon.—Coutereau.—Exhibit some barrels filled, with a charge of 12 inches of powder, 61⁄2 inches of shot, and warrant them not to burst on firing that charge.
Delabourse, Paris.—Good work “à la Purdey.”
Lefaucheaux, Paris, prize medalist, 1851.—Good embossed work; breech-loaders; also very good imitation of English work.
Such is a fair sample of the whole. But the best work by far is that by Gauvain, though not so highly estimated by the jury; but that is in many cases no test of ability whatever—as much depends upon the influence and standing of the individual.
Great exhibitions are calculated to effect great good if properly carried out. In that of the English exhibitors at Paris nothing could be more reprehensible, for the jurors left them to the tender mercies of their foreign competitors. In the case of the gun-makers, nothing could be worse, for the two jurymen appointed by the English Government never, I believe, saw a gun, home-made or foreign; and the fact of my obtaining two first-class medals speaks much for the impartiality of our Continental brethren.