_The Snaphaunce._—After the date just mentioned modifications and improvements in fire-arms were rapid and constant. The wheel-lock was finally followed by the “snaphaunce,” which was a straight piece of furrowed steel brought to bear upon the flint instead of the disk. It was more simple in its construction than the wheel-lock, and hence less liable to get out of order. Of course it worked in obedience to the action of a spring, but the spring was not a spiral—it was more on the plan of the mainspring in modern gun-locks. _The Flint-Lock._—About 1630 Spain again popped to the surface; this time with the regular flint-lock, embracing precisely the same mechanism as the flint-lock used in our Revolutionary war, and familiar to very many of the older people of the present day. Its advantages over the wheel-lock and the snaphaunce were so marked that France at once adopted it for use in her armies, but England held back, contending that the wheel-lock was the better invention, till 1690, when she gave up the contest, and adopted the flint-lock. _Important Improvements._—Rapidly following the invention of the flint-lock came important improvements in the musket. The stock was lightened and put into better shape, and sights were invented and placed upon the barrels. Up to this time the soldier had been forced to carry his ammunition in bulk, but now cartridges were brought into use, carried in convenient and neatly made cartridge-boxes. Steel bayonets to set over the muzzle of the gun also appeared, the first in 1693. Prior to this time a rude kind of bayonet had been more or less in use—it was a sort of dagger set into a wooden handle, the latter to be thrust into the muzzle of the gun in case of a hand-to-hand charge, where loading and firing could not be attended to. Iron ramrods took the place of the inconvenient and unsafe wooden ones formerly in use, which was regarded as a long stride in the efficiency of the musket. With the old wooden ramrods, clumsy and easily broken, the loading of a musket was a slow and laborious task, but the iron rod secured comparative ease and rapidity.