It is the stock, however, which is the most remarkable feature of the gun. This is of dark brown wood, completely covered with an elaborate inlay of brass wire and engraved mother-of-pearl in a design of floral scrolls issuing from vases and supporting birds and insects. A few escutcheons are inlaid in engraved bone or white stag horn. The elaborateness of this inlay, combined with its delicacy and taste, make this one of the outstanding matchlock guns of the world. The wheellock, which for the first time freed gunners from the necessity of carrying around with them a continuously burning coil of slow match, was invented in the early years of the sixteenth century and retained its popularity, in Germany at least, until the very end of the eighteenth. It thus has had a longer period of use than any other firearm with a discharge mechanism. The Museum’s earliest wheellock, from about 1550 (Fig. 44), has its entire octagonal barrel and lock magnificently decorated with damascene of floral arabesques in gold and silver. The stock is inlaid with engraved stag horn showing hunting scenes, Hercules’ capture of Iole (whose hand he had won by conquering her father, Eurytus, in a shooting match), and the figures of Alexander the Great and “Der Nero”. This gun well illustrates the close relationship which, in this day, existed between the various arts, for these inlaid designs are copied almost exactly from a series of engravings by Hans Sebald Beham (1500-_ca._ 1550), examples of which are in the City Art Museum’s print collection (Fig. 45). Another, rifled, specimen, from about 1635, formerly in the Liechtenstein collection (Fig. 46 [2]) has a plain barrel, but the lock is finely engraved with a hunting scene, while the stock (Fig. 47 [2]) is most elaborately inlaid with fine filigrees and engraved plates of stag horn representing mythological characters, animals, and monsters against an architectural and arabesque background. The stock bears the mark of Martin Süssebecker, who was born at Liegnitz in 1593, and died in 1668 at Dresden where he was gunmaker to the court of the Electors of Saxony. A light hunting rifle (Fig. 46 [3]) with a very short stock of the type known as _tschinke_ from the fact that such guns were made at the town of Teschen in German Silesia, dates probably from the latter part of the seventeenth century. It has a peculiar type of wheellock of which the mainspring and most of the other mechanism are exposed on the outside of the lock plate. The barrel is engraved. The lock is ornamented with openwork carving, and the stock (Fig. 47 [3]) is inlaid with mother-of-pearl and engraved stag horn in various designs and animal motives against a background of floral arabesques and scroll work.