Excerpt from The Book of the Rifle Many books have been written about arms and about rifles, yet so rapidly does invention move, that the subject is never exhausted. The events of the last two years have aroused a new interest in the rifle; soldiers, volunteers, civilians, all are alike keenly alive to its importance. At last we have begun to understand that the man, armed with a rifle, who is not expert in its use, is a mere mili tary fraud, and that, if he is to acquire skill, the only prescription is - a delightful pas time. I desire to acknowledge gratefully the ungrudging help of the many friends who have aided or advised me on points connected with this book. Were I to thank them separately, my preface would resemble a long bidding prayer. I would also record my warm sense of much goodwill and pleasant companionship during more than twenty-one years of rifle work, helped especially by patient and ungrudging kindness from shooting men of an older generation. There can be no finality in the evolution of firearms, at least until some quite new power of destruction shall make them obsolete. The present work, imperfect as it is, may serve to record the point which the rifle has attained at the opening of the twentieth century. About the Publisher Forgotten Books publishes hundreds of thousands of rare and classic books. Find more at www.forgottenbooks.com This book is a reproduction of an important historical work. Forgotten Books uses state-of-the-art technology to digitally reconstruct the work, preserving the original format whilst repairing imperfections present in the aged copy. In rare cases, an imperfection in the original, such as a blemish or missing page, may be replicated in our edition. We do, however, repair the vast majority of imperfections successfully; any imperfections that remain are intentionally left to preserve the state of such historical works.