it had come with all its smoke from wooden crossbows. About 1690 the flint lock was invented, it is supposed, by the Dutch, and continued in use, with slight alteration, until the last quarter of a century. In 1807 the Rev. Mr. Forsyth obtained a patent for the application of fulminating powder to the discharging of loaded guns. But his "application" was not so successful to a charge of gunpowder as to the points of a sermon; and it was not until 1816 that the copper cap was invented. Still this improvement was not introduced into the English military service until 1839.
The rifle comes down with a long history of improvements. The common gun-barrel was grooved towards the last of the fifteenth century; the first specimen being produced at Vienna. In 1620. Koster, of Nuremburg, gave the grooves a twist in order to produce a rotary motion to the ball. During the next century, the grooved musket or rifle came into a somewhat extensive use by several continental powers, but not by the English until the war of the American Revolution. Up to within fifteen years the use of the rifle was much limited by the time and care required to ram the ball home when incased in a patch of leather. For the space of forty years, much ingenuity was exercised in different countries to overcome this difficulty. M. Delvigne,
