Rifle

(ri'fl.) [From Ger. reifeln, to flute.] (Mil.) A gun, or small-arm, the barrel of which is grooved internally with spiral channels, so as to give the ball a rotary motion without the axis of progre ion; thus preventing any inconvenience from irregularity in the position of its centre of gravity, or from its friction against one side of the arm only. Such friction would cause the ball to revolve, so as to have its course seriously deflected, and in a direction which could not be guarded against, in taking aim, as it could not be previously known at what side its friction would occur. Rifles first came into use among European armies during the 17th cent., but nearly 200 years elapsed before any important change was made in its primitive construction, when, in 1826, a French man, M. Delvigne, invented the chambered rifle and the conical bullet. From that time down to the present day, but chiefly of late years, war rifles and rified ordnance have been so wonderfully improved, that the mode of carrying on war is being entirely remodelled. So numerous have become the varieties of rifles and rifled guns, and so diversely appreciated their merits, that to attempt to enter upon the description of even the most noted among them, would be to encroach beyond the limits of this article. It may be mentioned, however, that in the U. States, the kinds most in use are the Burnside, Remington, Sharp, Snider, Ward-Burton, ., rifles, and the Parrottand Gatling guns;- in England, the Whit worth, Jacob, Henry, Snider-converted-Enfield, and Martini-Henry rifles, and Armstrong, Blakely, Whit worth, Palliser, Fraser, and Mackay guns;-in Germany, the rifle known as the needle-gun (zündnadelgewehr), and theKrupp and Kramer guns;-in France, the Cha epot rifle, and the smooth-bore gun. [s. 771]