In Fig. 82 are represented the muzzle-loading musket and muzzle-loading rifles which formed the regulation weapons of the British infantry from the beginning of the century up to the year 1864. Somewhat slow in its earlier stages was the development of the modern military rifle from the old smooth bore musket with its flint-lock, which was the ordinary weapon of the British and other armies up to nearly the middle of this century. Partly, perhaps, owing to the inherent conservatism of government departments, and partly to the very serious outlay involved in arming all the troops of a nation with a new weapon, it has happened that many improvements in small arms were in use as applied to sporting guns, long before they were adopted in the regulation weapons of armies. The advance towards the modern arm of precision has been made along all the several directions that converge in the latest product, and it may be said that the most obvious of these are spiral rifling, breech-loading, and improved ammunition. The improvements in any one of these particulars would have been of little advantage unless the others had been kept in line with it. How long antiquated systems may continue in use may be illustrated by the case of the flint-lock, which was retained in the British army from the time it superseded the old match-lock, in the latter part of the seventeenth century, down to almost the middle of this present nineteenth. It is quite possible that not a few readers still in their fifties may never have seen a flint-lock outside of a museum, yet this was the firing apparatus of the weapon that used to be affectionately known to our soldiers as “Brown Bess,” and that for a century and a half continued the regulation arm of British troops helping Wellington to win his victories, and superseded by the percussion musket only in 1842. The “Brown Bess” of the earlier part of the century had a smooth-bore barrel of three-quarters of an inch diameter (0·753 inch), and 39 inches long; this musket weighed, with its bayonet, 11 lbs., 2 oz. The bullet was spherical, and made of lead, in weight a little over one ounce. The diameter of the bullet was slightly smaller than the bore of the barrel, because a closely fitting ball could not be used, on account of the great force required to push it home with a ram-rod. The bullet was therefore wrapped in loosely fitting material, called a “patch,” and this made the gun easy to load, even when the barrel was “fouled” by the solid residues that always remain after the explosion of gunpowder. “Brown Bess” was credited with a range of 200 yards, but its want of accuracy was such that the soldier was directed not to fire until he could see the whites of the enemies’ eyes. But in 1800 one or two British regiments were armed with the muzzle-loading rifle known as Baker’s, and again in 1835 these were provided with the _Brunswick rifle_. These regiments afterwards became known as the Rifle Brigade.