400 Nitro Express is quite correct, best guns were built with dovetail, through-lump and chopper-lump barrels. Austyn, in "Modern Sporting Guns" [1994 edition. page 19] states, . . ."it is common to find Boss, Holland & Holland and Woodward guns with dovetail lumps. Other makers would have used either method in their best guns, presumably according to the financial restrictions of their customers." I have owned both Boss and H&H guns of 1893 to 1908 vintage with dovetail lumps, both certainly "best" guns. Apparently only later did chopper-lump construction assume the somewhat magical [even festishistic?] status the term seems now to enjoy as a descriptor in the best gun lexicon. Bert Dunn