content_output-099_6 (Q7004)

The French gun-makers of St. Etienne claim for their town that it is the oldest centre of the fire-arms industry. They do not appear to have made more than the barrels of the finest sporting arms, and these even were sometimes made in Paris. The production of fire-arms by the artists of Paris reached its zenith about the middle of the seventeenth century. The annexed illustrations represent French