_The Breech-Loader._—When the percussion-lock had been fully adopted by the public, and all the “latest improvements” had been added to it, people thought that the fire-arm had attained to such a degree of perfection as to preclude any further change in the future; but how mistaken! The fate of the percussion-lock is now as much sealed as was that of the flint-lock at the test-trial of 1834. It is going the way of all its predecessors, and its entire extinction is only a matter of time. The breech-loader, with charge and ignition combined in the same cartridge, is rapidly taking its place, and, until some new and wonderful discovery comes to the surface, must, undoubtedly, stand paramount as the gun of the future. While springing into general favor at one leap, as it were, the breech-loader is no new and sudden appearance. In truth it is of great antiquity. In the Tower of London, the Woolwich Museum, and in the Museum of Paris, may be seen hundreds of breech-loaders that were made centuries ago. Of course they were not made to use the percussion cartridge peculiar to many such guns of modern make, nevertheless they were veritable breech-loaders, and the real suggestors, no doubt, of the modern arm of that character. In the Museum of Artillery, at Woolwich, there is a breech-loading pierrier, or paterera, of the time of Edward IV. (1471). It consists of a directing barrel, terminating in a square bar or frame of iron, and a separate loading chamber, with handle, which was fastened in its place for firing by an iron wedge. There are also found in the museums many breech-loading pistols, that were evidently in use about cotemporaneous with this gun. The records kept at St. Etienne, France, show that the French monarch, Henry II, shot with a breech-loading gun in 1540. And the English records show that the Marquis of Worcester took out a patent in that country for a breech action on the “cut-screw” principle in 1661. A portion of the specification reads as follows: “An invencione to make certain guns or pistols which in the tenth part of one minute of an hour may be re-charged; the fourth part of one turne of the barrell, which remains still fixt, fastening it as foreceably and effectually as a dozen shrids of any screw, which, in the ordinary and usual way require as many turnes.” There are several specimens of the breech-loader made on this plan, now in the Woolwich Museum. There are also other specimens, on a plan entirely different, made at a date but a little more recent, for it seems that then, as in modern days, one invention was very apt to suggest another. Three years after the Marquis of Worcester had taken out his patent, one Abraham Hill, of London, patented some six different systems of breech-loaders. In his specification concerning one of them he says: