“It is a new way of making a gun or a pistoll, the breech whereof rises on a hindge, by a contrivance of a motion under it, by which it is also let down and bolted fast by one of the same motion.” This, as will be readily seen, was rubbing pretty close upon the breech-loader of the present day. Since the dates of the patents just referred to, the breech-loading fire-arm is known to have been in uninterrupted existence; but so strong was the current turned against it by popular prejudice, that it was little known to the people in general. A want of scientific training among the masses was the cause which held it back; they were unable to clearly understand all the whys and wherefores connected with its workings, and, therefore, rejected it on the plea that it was dangerous, without really knowing whether it was or not. Great improvements in the breech-loader now succeeded each other with astonishing rapidity up to the time when M. Lefaucheux, of France, capped the climax by inventing the cartridge containing within itself the cap, or means of igniting the charge. This made it available as a sporting gun, and hence promptly set it forward into public attention; and finally, after a score or so of improvements, usually at the hands of the English, into public favor. It is, at last, the gun of the period, and the old muzzle-loader, with all its good qualities (and they were certainly many), is rapidly surrendering the field to the more successful candidate, and retiring in the footsteps of its honored predecessors, the wheel-lock and the flint-lock. CHAPTER II. HOW GUNS ARE MADE. _Gunsmith—Gunmaker._—The modern gunsmith is not necessarily a gunmaker, but rather a repairer of guns that have happened to get out of order. In earlier days the devotees to his calling may, in their little shops, have made guns entire, but now, if the gunsmith _makes_ them at all, that making consists in merely finishing up the parts and putting them together—generally making the stock entire. All gun parts can now be bought as “gunsmith’s materials,” either finished or in the rough, as may be desired. They are made by a variety of workmen, the business of each man being to make a single part, and nothing more. There is at present too much in a good gun to admit of all being made advantageously by one man; he would need to be a kind of “Jack-of-all-trades,” and, like the traditional Jack, it is but reasonable to suppose that he would be really first-class at none.