thus, a missile which produces a great moral effect may be superior to another which is actually more deadly, but of which the moral effect is small.

In ancient times the great difficulty which beset the man who fought with missiles was the lack of energy available. Except in a few cumbrous and complicated engines which were only used for sieges, there was only the muscular strength of the human body to draw upon, and this proved utterly inadequate to deliver a heavy blow at a considerable distance. Arrows and javelins had therefore to be made very sharp, and depended more on their piercing power than on the energy of the blow struck. And this piercing power was easily met and counteracted by the use of

armour.

The invention of gunpowder as a propellant at once introduced an entirely new state of things. A mere thimbleful of this mean black-looking stuff endued its happy possessor with far more than the strength of Goliath for sending his missile hurtling through the vitals of his enemy, armour or no armour. Indeed if the armour was sufficiently thick to stop the ponderous bullet carried by the arquebuse, the blow from the bullet was quite sufficient to knock the man-at-arms clean off his horse, when he became quite helpless. The fact was that the arrow, which at its best had a velocity of some 250 feet per second, was superseded by a bullet somewhat heavier

than the arrow, and travelling about five times as fast. It had therefore fully twenty-five times the energy, or, in other words, the knock-down blow was twenty-five times as great.

It is as well to explain these two terms, velocity and energy. The velocity is measured by the number of feet traversed in a second. Thus a cricket-ball hit hard travels about 100 feet per second, which is about the rate at which a carrier-pigeon flies. A golf-ball may start at 150 feet per second, an arrow at 250 feet, a pistol-bullet at 750 feet, a rifle-bullet at 1500 to 2000 feet, and so on. But the energy of the blow delivered by a projectile when instantaneously stopped in its flight is proportional not to the velocity but to the velocity multiplied by itself or squared; so that if the velocity be doubled the energy is increased fourfold. But the energy is directly derived from the propellant, the pinch of villainous saltpetre. So that if we wish to double the velocity of a bullet we must produce four times the energy, to obtain which we must increase the charge fourfold. And we cannot have energy forward without energy backwards, or recoil. If we take a pistol with 750 f.s.1 velocity, quadruple the charge, and give our new weapon four times the length of barrel for the gases to expand in, we get a rifle with twice the velocity obtained by the pistol, or 1500 f.s.; but we also increase the recoil to such an extent that if a rifle

When armour was abandoned, much of the energy of the arquebuse went with it, and the musket or old Brown-Bess was gradually developed, -a much lighter and handier weapon than the arquebuse, and with less recoil, which still delivered a tremendous blow at close quarters. The energy of the bullet from Brown - Bess was about 2000 ft. lb.1 or about forty times as great as the blow from a hard-hit cricketball, and twice that delivered by the Dum-Dum or other expanding bullet fired from the Lee Metford rifle at short range. Moreover, the wound made by the musket-ball was nearly six times as large as that made by the ordinary LeeMetford bullet, and probably decidedly worse than anything that the Dum-Dum bullet can do. It is most unlikely that modern war will ever produce such terrific effects as were caused by the delivery of a volley at close quarters from old Brown-Bess. Those struck were in a moment violently hurled to the ground, and the dreadful volley, invariably followed as it was by a bayonet charge, must

But great as was the energy and terrible as was the effect of the bullet from Brown-Bess, it was only at short ranges that it produced these decisive results. It was considered useless to fire at a longer range than 200 yards, and at 400 yards' range the bullet was quite "spent" and harmless. What was the cause of this? It was due to the tremendous resistance of the air to a spherical bullet. It has been calculated that on starting the musket-bullet experienced a resistance from the air equal to a weight of 10 lb., steadily retarding it. Such a tremendous retarding influence soon took all the energy out of the bullet. Moreover, owing partly to the loose fit of the bullet in the barrel, but also owing to the air resistance, it was found impossible to obtain accuracy from a smooth-bore, except at very short ranges. The same musket which would hit a playing-card at 20 yards would miss two men standing side by side at 100 yards. The loading was of course very slow: thus if a company delivered an ineffective fire at 150 yards, their opponents could close in to 50 yards before they had time to reload, and at this range a volley was decisive. However, for centuries all this was accepted as inevitable, and

for some 200 years nothing was done to materially improve the musket or its bullet, although the principle of rifling is at least 400 years old or more.

The lack of range and accuracy of the musket was somewhat compensated for by the introduction of the smooth-bore field-gun. This weapon was at its best at a range of 300 to 400 yards, when it discharged a number of balls some -lb. in weight, styled grape-shot. Thus, at a range where the musket was harmless, the field - gun could deliver as deadly a volley as that from, say, two dozen muskets. Moreover, the grapeshot had at close quarters quite energy enough to dispose of two men in succession. But circumstances frequently arose where a range of more than 400 yards was required, and then the field-gun had to load with round-shot, which made it efficient up to 1000 yards, or more. The round-shot, in common with the grape-shot and all spherical projectiles, after striking the ground, behaved very much as does the ordinary cricket or golf ball. It bounded along not far from the ground, though occasionally rising if it

struck some stone or similar obstacle if the ground was fairly smooth, it would sweep some hundreds of yards of ground, knocking over several men in its progress, but finally slowing down so much that it could not only be plainly seen, but readily avoided. On rough ground the round-shot lost much of its terror: not only did it sooner come to a stop, but it would frequently fly over the

heads of those against whom it was aimed. We may look down upon the round-shot now as a crude and primitive missile to load such an important weapon as a gun with; but the fact remains that the average roundshot of old did more execution than the average shell of the present day, -for though the projectile has improved, the ingenuity of man in avoiding its effect has improved at a greater ratio.

But at its best the old-fashioned field-gun was a very crude weapon, and its spherical projectiles, like the musket-bullet, were greatly impeded by the resistance to the air, while its accuracy also was extremely poor. Still it outlived its prototype, the musket, some years.

It was not till after the Crimean war that the smoothbore musket was finally superseded by the rifle, although it had been known for centuries that giving a spin to a bullet enabled it to get through the air with much less resistance, especially when the bullet was long and narrow, as was possible when rifling was used: it also greatly improved its accuracy. But when rifles came into general use, it was realised that the range of the infantry small- arm had been quadrupled, and that a most deadly fire could now be poured in up to, say, 500 yards, whilst some effect was actually produced at the hitherto unheardof range of 800 yards. It was, therefore, most desirable that the field - gun should be improved in range, otherwise the men and horses would be liable

fences, and these only use shot when the armour opposed to them is so thick as to be impenetrable by the best and toughest steel shells. Like many other comparatively modern implements of war, shells were known for many centuries before they came into general use. How long ago they were used in China is an open question; but they were certainly used in India 500 years ago, and have been used in Europe for three centuries at least. The original shells were simply hollow spheres of cast-iron filled with powder, a hole being left for the insertion of the fuse or slow-match. They were used almost exclusively in siege operations, being lobbed out of a mortar or howitzer at a high elevation with a very small charge, which also ignited the fuse. Theshell was thus dropped into the enemy's works, where on the burning out of the fuse it exploded, throwing its fragments with considerable violence in all directions. The fuse was for a long time the weak point: it often got put out in the air, or was extinguished on striking. Again, when a shell fell, there was commonly time to get clear of the force of the explosion before the fuse burnt out. The fuse which satisfied our forefathers, and which was in use up to a very recent date, consisted of a tapered plug of hard wood with a hole up the centre, filled with finely ground and tightly rammed gunpowder, or with a composition closely allied to gunpowder. This composition, when lighted, burnt fiercely, in the same manner as the

ordinary squib - when burnt through, the shell burst. If it was required to shorten the time of burning, the end was simply sawn off, or a hole was bored through the side of the fuse, to allow the flame to communicate with the powder in the shell when only a certain proportion of the fuse composition was burnt out. But, however carefully fuses were sawn or bored with the view of making a shell burst directly after it struck the object, the results were anything but satisfactory: the shells would either burst long before they reached the object, or some time after they struck.

Then the percussion-fuse was devised, which explodes a shell immediately it strikes. The usual method is to have a small weight inside the fuse, which is held in its place until the gun is fired: the consequent shock releases this weight, which is then free to fly forward on the least retardation of the shell. On the shell striking, the weight flies forward, hits a percussioncap, and explodes the shell.

It was doubtless thought when shells with percussionfuses were first introduced that a shell bursting close to a hostile gun would of necessity disable it. Not only was this found to be untrue; but it has frequently happened that the gun itself or its carriage has been hit by a shell which has duly burst, and yet no harm has resulted to the gun. Such an incident happened during the bombardment of Montmédy, and is narrated by Prince Kraft. The shell from a heavy fortressgun hit and left a graze on one