see d'Artillerie, and the
Hotel Cluny, at Paris, as well as some ancient Eastern arms brought from
India by Lord William Bentinck, demonstrated the early efforts that had
been made to produce arms capable of rapidly firing several times
consecutively, without the delay of loading after each discharge.
Drawings of these specimens were exhibited, comprising the match-lock,
the pyrites wheel-lock, the flint-lock, down to the percussion-lock, as
adapted by the author. Among the match-lock guns, some had as many as
eight chambers, rotating by hand. Some of the pyrites wheel-lock guns
had also as many as eight chambers, and rotated by hand; one of them,
made in the seventeenth century, had the peculiarity of igniting the
charge close behind the bullet, burning backwards towards the breech--an
arrangement identical in principle with that of the modern Prussian
"needle gun," for which great merit has been claimed. The flint-locks
induced more determined efforts, but all were abortive, as the magazines
for priming and the pan covers were continually blown off on the
explosion of the charge. Indeed, from the earliest match-lock down to
the present time, the premature explosion of several chambers, owing to
the simultaneous ignition of the charges, from the spreading of the fire
at their mouths, had been the great source of difficulty. In some of the
most ancient specimens, orifices were provided in the butt of the barrel
for the escape of the bullets in case of explosion, whilst others had
evidently been destroyed by this action. In a brass model of a pistol of
the time of Charles II., from the United Service Museum, there was an
ingenious attempt to cause the chamber to rotate, by mechanical action,
in some degree similar, but more complicated than the arms constructed
by the author. The "Coolidge" and the "Collier" guns, both flint guns of
comparatively modern manufacture, exhibited the same radical defects of
liability to premature explosion.

The invention of Nock's patent breech, and the Rev. Mr. Forsyth's
introduction of the detonating or percussion guns, which latter
principle, with the necessary mechanical arrangements for the caps, was
essential to the safe construction of repeating fire-arms, constituted a
new era in these weapons.

Colonel Colt gave a detailed and interesting account of his experiments,
which resulted in the invention of his celebrated revolvers. His
communication, the first that had been brought befo