content_output-091_3 (Q6872)

The use of fire-arms for sporting and other purposes became so general towards the middle of the sixteenth century that a prohibition appeared in the State Papers of the Elector Augustus of Saxony, dated the 10th October, 1555, and in it the following passage occurs :—“Whereas the carrying of fire-arms in our dominions has become so general that not only travellers, but peasants and shepherds, are found to use them.”