Since that trial considerable advance has been made in the minutiæ of the manufacture; and now it is the general impression of those acquainted with the arm, that the breech-loader, with a slight additional increase of powder, shoots both stronger and closer than its rival. In the pigeon-match between the nobility and gentry of England in 1863, described in the London _Field_, volume xxiii., p. 389, where it is to be supposed that the best implements the country could furnish were used, and where some of the shooting was done at thirty yards, the first and second prizes were both taken by breech-loaders. With all allowance for the quality of the marksman, the quality of the gun that wins a match at English “blue-rocks” must unquestionably be good; and this, the universal experience of those matter-of-fact John Bulls, who test everything by success, has entirely confirmed. A trial of guns was made in 1859, and the results were published in tabular form in _The Shot-Gun and Sporting Rifle_, by Stonehenge, p. 304. The targets were made of double bag-cap paper, 90 lbs. to the ream, circular, thirty inches in diameter, with a centre of twelve inches square, and were nailed against a smooth surface of deal boards. The centres were composed of forty thicknesses for forty yards, and twenty for sixty yards, and weighed eighteen and nine ounces respectively, with such slight variation as will always occur in brown paper. The powder was Laurence’s No. 2, the shot No. 6, containing 290 pellets to the ounce, and the charges were weighed in every instance. TABLES OF THE FIELD TRIAL.