In reply to:

---

"The subject of curtain raiser at the 13 March lecture meeting was the Jacob Rifle. The speaker, Terry Willson, has mentioned before the double-barrelled, muzzle-loading military carbine. This time he concentrated on how its development and history was influenced by the personality and circumstances of its inventor, Brigadier John Jacob, of the British East India Company's Army in the decade prior to the Indian Mutiny of 1875.

---

I yeald to the mention of a double rifle in a millitary referance. However, the double rifle was in evidence long before 1875. This is what I meant by a hunting rifles being addapted to war use, the same way all, or at least, many war rifles were addapted to hunting. It is evident, the system did not lend it's self to war well, and so was not accepted, and were sold as sporting rifles, instead.

Many of the frontier trappers, and mountain men, of the American west, used swivel barreled, O/U double rifles, made on the Kentucky long rifle pattern, (actually not Kentucky at all, but Pinnsilvania rifles,but used first in the Kentucky wilderness). Even though these rifles were used , in some cases to fight the British regulars in the revolutionary war, they were simply hunting rifles, pressed into service because the owner had nothing else! Seems to have worked!