Читать книгу The Complete English Wing Shot онлайн

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The flint and steel method of ignition enabled the shot gun to be used on flying game, but the flint and steel came in somewhere about the year 1600, and shooting flying game did not become general until after 1700 A.D.

Meantime there had been royal prohibitions in this country, as well as in France, against the use of hail-shot, and it can well be understood, at a time when shooting at coveys on the ground was considered no breach of sporting etiquette, that some restraint became necessary. Before the use of the flint and steel, the heavier weapons were employed by using for them a stand to rest the muzzle upon, and this was made necessary, not so much by reason of the weight as by the uncertainty of the precise moment of the explosion, and the expediency of keeping the weapon “trained” on the object until the powder chose to catch fire and explode.

Before the invention of the flint and steel, the value of rifling had been discovered. There is a doubt whether the discovery is due to the late fifteenth or the early sixteenth century, but at any rate it was well known on the Continent about 1540 A.D. There are rifled barrels at Zürich arsenal that have been there since 1544. The most ancient in this country was brought from Hungary in 1848, and bears the date 1547. There has been an idea that the first grooves in weapons were not spiralled but straight, but this does not seem to be correct, as all the most ancient grooved weapons known are spirals of more or less rapid turn. Some of them have a variation of twist within themselves. There have been many straight grooved weapons, but the object of them is lost. It has been suggested that they were used for shot, but they could have had no advantage over smooth bores for that purpose, and no advantage over muskets for ball. Nevertheless, the science of ballistics was not generally understood when they were made, and probably a rifled shot gun would have been attractive, as an advertisement, when it was known that a rifle was accurate with ball, and when the reason of its accuracy was unknown to most people.