The .25 Stevens was an American

United States

The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...

 rimfire

Rimfire ammunition

A rimfire is a type of firearm cartridge. It is called a rimfire because instead of the firing pin of a gun striking the primer cap at the center of the base of the cartridge to ignite it , the pin strikes the base's rim....

 rifle

Rifle

A rifle is a firearm designed to be fired from the shoulder, with a barrel that has a helical groove or pattern of grooves cut into the barrel walls. The raised areas of the rifling are called "lands," which make contact with the projectile , imparting spin around an axis corresponding to the...

 cartridge

Cartridge (firearms)

A cartridge, also called a round, packages the bullet, gunpowder and primer into a single metallic case precisely made to fit the firing chamber of a firearm. The primer is a small charge of impact-sensitive chemical that may be located at the center of the case head or at its rim . Electrically...

.

Developed by J. Stevens Arms & Tool Company

Stevens Arms

Stevens Arms was an American firearms manufacturer founded by Joshua Stevens in 1864. The company introduced the .22 Long Rifle round and made a number of rifle, shotgun, and target pistol designs before being bought by Savage Arms in 1920. After 1920, Stevens made training rifles and machineguns...

 and Peters Cartridge Company

Peters Cartridge Company

The Peters Cartridge Company was a company in Kings Mills, Ohio that specialized in gunpowder and ammunition production. Its historic buildings, built in 1916 at 1915 Grandin Road, were added to the National Register of Historic Places on October 10, 1985....

, it was developed between 1898 and 1900; catalogs suggest it was introduced in 1898, but most sources agree on 1900. It was offered in the Crack Shot #15 rifle, which debuted in 1900. It may also have been available in the Favorite rifle, which was first released in 1894. It originally used used a 10 gr black powder

Gunpowder

Gunpowder, also known since in the late 19th century as black powder, was the first chemical explosive and the only one known until the mid 1800s. It is a mixture of sulfur, charcoal, and potassium nitrate - with the sulfur and charcoal acting as fuels, while the saltpeter works as an oxidizer...

 charge under a 67 gr slug; this was later replaced by smokeless

Smokeless powder

Smokeless powder is the name given to a number of propellants used in firearms and artillery which produce negligible smoke when fired, unlike the older gunpowder which they replaced...

.

With "an excellent reputation" as a small game

Game (food)

Game is any animal hunted for food or not normally domesticated. Game animals are also hunted for sport.The type and range of animals hunted for food varies in different parts of the world. This will be influenced by climate, animal diversity, local taste and locally accepted view about what can or...

 (such as rabbit) and varmint round, it suffered excessively high trajectory

Trajectory

A trajectory is the path that a moving object follows through space as a function of time. The object might be a projectile or a satellite, for example. It thus includes the meaning of orbit—the path of a planet, an asteroid or a comet as it travels around a central mass...

 (a drop of 5.1 in (129.5 mm) at 100 yd (91.4 m)) compared to the .22 Long Rifle

.22 Long Rifle

The .22 Long Rifle rimfire cartridge is a long established variety of ammunition, and in terms of units sold is still by far the most common in the world today. The cartridge is often referred to simply as .22 LR and various rifles, pistols, revolvers, and even some smoothbore shotguns have...

. It was available with either solid lead or hollow point bullet.

Serving as the parent for the less-successful .25 Stevens Short

.25 Stevens Short

The .25 Stevens Short was an American rimfire rifle cartridge, introduced in 1902.Developed by J. Stevens Arms & Tool Company, it was intended to be a lower cost, less potent variant of the .25 Stevens, on which it was based. It initially used a black powder charge; this was later replaced by...

 and experimental Remington

Remington Arms

Remington Arms Company, Inc. was founded in 1816 by Eliphalet Remington in Ilion, New York, as E. Remington and Sons. It is the oldest company in the United States which still makes its original product, and is the oldest continuously operating manufacturer in North America. It is the only U.S....

 .267 Rimfire, it was dropped in 1942.

Sources

• Barnes, Frank C., ed. by John T. Amber. ".25 Stevens", in Cartridges of the World, pp. 276 & 282-3. Northfield, IL: DBI Books, 1972. ISBN 0-695-80326-3.