Mr. F. W. Prince, of No. 138, Bond-street, has patented an improvement to obviate this difficulty; this he does by elevating or pointing upward the second barrel, so as to cover the calculated fall in the body of the shot; and the result is, that the second bird is as well aimed at and as efficiently killed as the first. The alteration is so exceedingly simple, and the benefit resulting from it so apparent, that the only wonder is that it should never have been done before; and it being the improvement of a really practical sportsman of the very first class, as Mr. Prince has long been known to be, is sufficient to stamp his invention as worthy of every consideration.
CHAPTER VIII.
THE FRENCH “CRUTCH,” OR BREECH-LOADING SHOT GUN.
Sporting in France has never been brought to the same state of perfection as in this country. Grouse-shooting on our wild romantic hills is a very different sport from quail, partridge, or rabbit shooting in the vales and on the hills of the Continent. Wild game requires great energy and perseverance on the part of the sportsman, courage and strength on the part of the dog, and last, though not least, great capacity on the part of the gun. For many years the superiority of the English manufactured gun, as well as of the English gunpowder, and the matchless skill of the English sportsman, have been acknowledged by all the world. All things, however, have their limits—the longest lane has a turning, and a very plausible and insidious innovation has been made to detract from the acquired reputation of the English sportsman, and render his shooting inferior to that of some of our friends on the other side of the Channel.
The French system of breech-loading fire-arms is a specious pretence, the supposed advantages of which have been loudly boasted of; but none of these advantages have as yet been established by its most strenuous advocates. How it is that the British sportsman has become the dupe of certain men who set themselves up for reputable gunmakers I know not. It is certain, however, that by these acts they have forfeited all claim to the confidence of their too confiding customers, and that they never could have tested the shooting properties of their guns. With regard to the safety of these guns, they display an utter want of the most ordinary judgment; and this is abundant proof that they considered neither their safety, nor (what is also of importance) the economy of the whole arrangement, as regards their manufacture or their use.
Guns are perfect only so long as they possess the power of shooting strong and close, with the least available charges. The period has passed when barrels were bored by rule of thumb, without any well-defined intention; the workman being ignorant as to whether he would have the bore of the barrel cylindrical, or (as was frequently the case) in the form of two inverted cones, and thus he continued to bore at the barrel until it was utterly useless, or until by chance he hit upon a tidy shooting bore. Barrels are now constructed so nearly alike, that it is no stretch of truth to assert that ninety-six or ninety-eight barrels out of a hundred can be made so nearly alike in their shooting, as to render it very difficult to discover the real difference between them. Yet, in the face of this high state of perfection certain English gunmakers introduce, and recommend to their patrons as an improvement, a description of gun possessing the following negative qualities:—First, there is no possibility of a breech-loader ever shooting equal to a well-constructed muzzle loader; secondly, the gun is unsafe, and becomes more and more unsafe from the first time it is used; and, thirdly, it is a very costly affair, both as regards the gun and ammunition. Nor are these negative qualities at all compensated for by any of the advantages claimed for these guns by their advocates; this assertion I now proceed to establish.
In the first place recoil has been an important obstacle to contend with, ever since the invention of fire-arms, and the methods of lessening recoil have engaged the special attention of all inventors up to the present day; on this important point, indeed, very much depends. Gunnery is good only when recoil exists in a minimum degree. Force, whether it be that of the gentle “zephyr,” or of the mammoth steam-boiler which is capable of moving thousands of tons, can always be measured, and the friction of steam against the tube through which it passes can be measured also.
The time was, when guns were so imperfectly constructed, that the recoil and friction of the charge against the barrel destroyed more than half the force generated by the explosion of the gunpowder; and this loss of force having been obviated, by finely polishing the interior of the barrel, as well as by improving the metal of the gun, has rendered English guns superior in their performance to those manufactured in any other country. Breeches of a conical form offer the greatest resistance to the action of aëriform bodies in a direct line; this is the principle of what is best known as “the patent breech:” to speak of which would be a waste of time, as nothing more is required to support its superiority than the fact, that in well constructed artillery of every country, the interior form of the breech or chamber is more or less conical. Thus we see that by adopting the crutch gun, we have to give up one of the oldest and most universally acknowledged principles in lessening recoil—namely, the conical form of the breech—and to adopt the very reverse of this: namely, the old right-angled, flat-faced breech, upon which recoil can exert its utmost force with the certainty of its reaching the shoulder of the unfortunate user.
Secondly, to enable the gun to be loaded with a cartridge which shall keep its place, a complicated arrangement is necessary. On inspection of the barrel, it will be perceived that a cavity has been formed larger than the bore of the barrel, and that this in some cases only tapers toward the further end. This cavity exactly receives the cartridge, and the gunpowder is inflamed in a space much larger than the barrel, which it has afterwards to pass through. The charge of shot is also started in a larger space than that which it afterwards has to traverse, and the column must of necessity become contracted and elongated before it can escape from the barrel. The first consideration is at what cost of force is all this effected? Thirty per cent. would certainly be a shrewd guess; and who is there conversant with the nature of gunpowder hardy enough to gainsay the fact?