from his style of bearing, as a "sea-horse." Neptune's car might not be a very picturesque object in the eyes of the prejudiced drawn by walruses, yet they would be more appropriate than land-horses at sea. Mr. Lamont, however, says that it ought to be called sea-elephant instead of sea-horse. The Norwegians, we have seen, called them whale-horses. "There were, at least," says Mr. Lamont, "ten of these bergs, so packed with the walruses that in some places they lay two-deep on the ice." There cannot have been less than three hundred in sight at once, but they were very shy and restless; and although they tried every troop in succession, as carefully as possible, they did not succeed in getting within harpooning distance of a single walrus.

The walrus is an inoffensive creature if let alone, but hunting them is far from being child's play, as the following sad story will show:

About ten days after the exciting chasse which I have just described, the skyppar of a small schooner, which was in sight, came on board to ask us for the loan of a gun, as he had broken all his, and he told us that a boat belonging to a sloop from Tromsöe had been upset two or three days before in our immediate vicinity, and one of the crew killed by a walrus. It seemed that the walrus, a large old bull, charged the boat, and the harpooner as usual received him with his lance full in the chest, but the shaft of the lance broke all to shivers, and the walrus, getting inside of it, threw himself on the gunwale of the boat and overset it in an instant. While the men were floundering in the water amongst their oars and tackle, the infuriated animal rushed in amongst them, and selecting the unlucky harpooner, who, I fancy had fallen next him, he tore him nearly into two halves with his tusks. The rest of the men saved themselves by clambering

on to the ice until the other boat came to their assistance.

Upon another occasion, I made the acquaintance of the skyppar of a sloop, who had been seized by a bereaved cow-walrus, and by her dragged twice to the bottom of the sea; but without receiving any injury beyond being nearly drowned and having a deep scar ploughed in each side of his forehead by the tusks of the animal, which he thought did not wish to hurt him, but mistook him for her calf, as he floundered in the water.

Owing to the great coolness and expertness of the men following this pursuit, such mishaps are not of very frequent occurrence, but still a season seldom passes without two or three lives being lost one way or another.

On the 16th they beat back to the "Thousand Islands," as the Norsemen thought that the great herds of walruses had gone that way. They dined that day, for the first time, upon stewed walrus veal, and describe it as very good meat, without the disagreeable fishy flavour of seal, but slightly insipid.

One Monday morning (they did not shoot on Sundays) they saw their first bear "Gamle Eric," as the Norsemen said; they never speak of a bear as Biorn, but as old Eric," the party in the brown jacket," "the old gentleman in the fur cloak," &c.; they have far too much respect for him. Landing amidst crowds of gulls, fulmars, eider-ducks, and other palmigrades, our sportsmen soon drove Bruin out to sea, then overtook him and shot him. As to the eider-ducks and fulmars, they allowed themselves to be killed by being knocked off their nests with sticks and stones! Mr. Lamont also says he saw the singular appearance called "red snow," and he declares it to be caused by the colouring matter contained in the droppings of millions of little awks; these birds, he says, feed almost entirely on shrimps, and, consequently, void a substance bearing a strong resemblance to anchovy sauce. Unluckily for this

theory the so-called "red snow " has been found in spots where awks have no existence, as in the Alps and Pyrenees, and, examined by competent persons, has been stated to be a vegetable growth: the first germ of life, as it were, not on inanimate rock, but on inanimate and yet enduring snow. Bauer called it Uredo nivalis; Wrangel and Agardh, Leprasia kermesina; Fries, Chlorococcus; and Greville, Protococcus nivalis. Ross found it covering mountains eight miles in length, and six hundred feet in elevation.

Mr. Lamont, who will not believe in snow fungi, is yet weak enough to give credit to the superstition that Polar bear's grease turns the hair white!

High up Deeva Bay our yachtsmen found fast ice, of last winter's growth, covered with snow of dazzling whiteness, showing off to great advantage some hundreds of minute black dots, which the telescope detected to be so many seals.

There were seven or eight huge fellows all lying close to the outer edge of the ice, and we first opened approaches in form against them. They were very shy, and would not allow the boat to come within shot; but no sooner had they dived into the sea than their unfortunate habit of curiosity got the better of them, and every one of them came close around the boat, popping up their heads like "Jacks-in-the-box," and flourishing their heels in the air contemptuously as they dived again. I never enjoyed more exciting sport than I had for a couple of hours or so, for as fast as I could load and fire there was a great round bullet-head standing like a target in the water ready for me, and as the sea was calm nearly every shot was successful. Without the boat going a hundred yards from the spot, I shot dead fifteen seals of the very largest size; but although I took the utmost pains not to fire until the boat's head was directed straight towards the seal and within thirty yards of him, still I had the perverse bad luck to lose twelve out of the fifteen, and generally had the additional vexation of seeing them sinking out of reach of the harpoon, just a second of time too late. We managed to get hold of three immense fellows.

After this, Mr. Lamont took to harpooning his own seals, and with, he says, great success. It certainly did seem useless butchery to slay these huge animals, and strew the muddy bottom of Deeva Bay with their carcases, for no purpose whatsoever. A bushel or so apiece of small fish, about five or six inches long, were found in the stomachs of these seals. Excepting cetacea there are no fish of any size found in the Spitzbergen seas. Polar bears live on seals, seals on small fish, and cetacea on molluscs. Mr. Lamont does not give credit to the first-named animalwhich he declares to be the largest and strongest carnivorous animal in the world, that is, stronger than a lion!-for much courage. Like all other wild animals (with the exception of rare occasions, and in this view of the matter we quite agree with him) he will never face a man if he can help it. Scoresby relates a very amusing instance of the inoffensive character of a Polar bear, that climbed into a boat and took its seat coolly inside, without offering to hurt the crew that hung on outside the boat, which they had vacated for Bruin. If they are not very courageous, they are, like the morse, affectionate to one another, and especially to the "jungers." This our yachtsmen had an opportunity of testifying to. Besides bear, walrus, and great Arctic seal (Phoca barbata), two other seals are met with at Spitzbergen (literally "sharp-topped mountains"), one the small seal (Phoca vitulina), which lies on rocks-a thing the

great Spitzbergen seal never does-and drops in the water; the great seal tumbles in, whale fashion, like the walrus; and the springer (Phoca hispida), also called Jan Mayen seal, from its abundance in that island, a gregarious animal, so mild that four hundred have been killed in a single afternoon by the simple process of knocking them on the head. Poor things! what were they born for? Yet has the likeness of seals to human beings given origin to the fabulous mermaid, the mermaids of poets, not those of Mr. Lamont, who most ungallantly likens mermaids to demons:

The upper lip of the walrus is thickly set with strong, transparent, bristly hairs, about six inches long, and as thick as a crow-quill; and this terrific moustache, together with his long white tusks, and fierce-looking, blood-shot eyes, gives Rosmarus trichecus altogether a most unearthly and demoniacal appearance as he rears his head above the waves. I think it not unlikely that the old fable of the mermaid may have been originated by their grim resemblance to the head of a human being when in this position.

The walrus, it appears, is being gradually exterminated :

From all the information which I have been able to collect on the subject, I calculate that about one thousand walruses and twice that number of bearded seals are annually captured in the seas about Spitzbergen, exclusive of those which sink or may die of their wounds; so that some idea may be formed of the numbers of these curious and useful amphibious monsters still existing in that country; but it is quite clear that they are undergoing a rapid diminution of numbers, and also that they are gradually receding into more and more inaccessible regions further to the north.

The reindeer still abounds in most parts of Spitzbergen, and in every valley which affords vegetation a troop of from three to twenty is generally to be met with. They do not grow to such a large size as the tame reindeer of Lapland, nor are their horns quite so fine, but they attain to a most extraordinary degree of condition. The flesh is delicious, second only to that of a fat eland, but third to the Lapp (Cavia paca) of the West Indies, which Mr. Lamont declares to be the best "culinary animal in the world." There are no wolves in Spitzbergen, so the reindeer have. a tolerably happy life of it, and they are so tame that on one occasion when one was shot, he turned round and butted a companion, evidently under the impression that the bullet-wound was the result of a treacherous prod from the horns of a friend! In conclusion, after chronicling, as our yachtsmen did on one of the cabin beams of the Anna Louisa, that they had slain on this trip 46 walruses, 88 seals, 8 Polar bears, 1 white whale, and 61 reindeer, we must say that the narrative is not only most amusing reading, but it adds a very great deal to what was previously known of the habits of the animals in question, especially of the walrus. Mr. Lamont, it may be observed, is a decided advocate of the progressive development theory, but while he believes that a common bear may by force of circumstances become a Polar bear, and that a Polar bear may for want of other food swim with its mouth open devouring molluscs, he is not quite prepared to admit that bears may be rendered "by natural selection more and more aquatic in their structure and habits, with larger and larger mouths, till a creature was produced as monstrous as a whale!”

RIFLED ORDNANCE.

SINCE 1815 the infantry troops, armed with the smooth-bore musket, had gradually fallen behind the artillery, as the latter, owing to great improvements effected in the ordnance, and by removal of much dead weight from the limbers, gained materially in facility of manoeuvring, and were enabled to alter their position in the field much as they pleased. At the same time great attention was paid to the ammunition and the perfection of the shrapnel, a destructive missile invented at the close of the last century, and the introduction of Congreve rockets gave fieldpieces a range such as was never dreamed of before. This disproportion between the two arms could not, however, be allowed to exist, and the gradual introduction of rifled fire-arms in the ranks rendered it an easy matter for the latter to attack batteries, while remaining in perfect safety themselves. As a natural consequence, every effort has been made to restore the artillery to its old supremacy, and it is our purpose in the present paper to describe what has been done generally, while carefully avoiding all scientific explanations and descriptions.

An increased range with field-pieces (we are here referring to the period before rifled ordnance was introduced) could only be acquired, as a general rule, by the enlargement of the guns which allowed of a greater charge of powder and heavier projectiles, but rendered them, at the same time, more difficult to move about in the field. The destructive power of the various projectiles increases, however, when it does not strike the mark as a unit, but divides in its vicinity into a number of death-dealing pieces. In order to explain this feeling to our non-professional readers, and, at the same time, obtain certain ground for the principal subject of our paper, we will first take a cursory glance at the guns and projectiles hitherto used, and, to a certain extent, still in use with field artillery.

Field ordnance consists of cannon and howitzers, the former having long barrels, and intended to shoot massive projectiles at the foe with considerable velocity; while the latter, with shorter barrels, and a conical chamber for the reception of the powder-charge, are fired at a considerable elevation, so that the projectile may be thrown over any covering ground into the enemy's ranks. For such practice we can easily see that an ordinary cannon-ball is not suitable, for, under the most favourable circumstances, supposing that it hit anything where it fell, it could not kill more than two or three at the most. Hence, shells are fired from howitzers-that is to say, hollow bullets filled with powder, so contrived as to burst where they fall, and inflict considerable injury. Our readers can easily understand that, owing to the elevation necessarily given to the howitzer, the powder-charge must be very small, for the recoil acts on the carriage, and would soon render it unserviceable. The defect of the howitzer, and the impossibility of covering long distances, produced a desire among artillerymen to combine the percussion force of the level shot with the destructive power of the shell, and led, at the beginning of the century, to the introduction of the shell guns and long howitzers. To enable our readers to form an idea of the difference of the four sorts of guns, we will observe here that the chief distinction lies in the length April-VOL. CXXI. NO. CCCCLXXXIV.

2 K

of the barrel, that of the field-guns being 17 to 18 shot diameters; shell guns, 12 to 14; long howitzers, 10 to 11; and short howitzers, 6 to 74. Naturally, too, the guns intended to fire shells must have a larger calibre than those that fire solid shot, and hence we find the following guns employed by the various armies:

The 12-pounder, weight of bullet 12 lbs.; calibre, about 4 inches.

Of these guns, the 12 and 6-pounder are generally used; 9-pounder are used in England, while the 8-pounder-special favourites of the French-have been recently abolished in that country. Heavier guns than these, for instance 16 and 18-pounder, were exceptionally employed in the field by the Austrians during the last war, and by the Russians in the Crimea; but they are too heavy, and require too many horses, and hence are only valuable in strong positions. Shell-guns are only in existence as 12-pounders, and were hitherto principally employed in France, where the Emperor Napoleon, by the introduction of this gun (called after him the "canon de l'empereur"), as the only one taken into the field, certainly desired to obtain a very valuable simplification of the ammunition; but latterly rifled guns have, to some extent, taken their place. The long howitzers have nearly universally a calibre of 5 inches, and go by the name of 24-pounders, owing to an iron shot of that weight fitting them, or 7-pounders (in Germany alone), where stone shot of that weight were fired. Of short howitzers, lastly, there are several varieties: the 30-pounder, with a calibre of 6 to 6 inches, but these have been nearly abolished, as heavy and clumsy; the 24-pounder howitzer, with a calibre of about 5 inches, and the one in most general use, and the 12-pounder, employed as a mountain gun. The iron shells of these howitzers weigh respectively 22, 14, and 6 lbs.

Guns are loaded with a charge of powder generally one-third the weight of the bullet and solid shot, canister, or shrapnels. Canister is a large form of sporting cartridge, that is to say, a quantity of iron bullets placed in a tin box, for greater convenience of loading. On firing, the box is broken, and the bullets fly forward, gradually spreading, like the shot charge from a fowling-piece. The shrapnels are very differently made they are hollow shot, filling the gun, and filled with a large quantity of leaden bullets and a small powder-charge, sufficient to burst the shell, but not to scatter the bullets in every direction, so that the latter, obeying the velocity imparted to the shell on leaving the gun, continue to fly forward. In order to make the projectile burst at the right moment, a "fuse" is inserted in a hole through the side of the shell, which gradually burns down till it reaches the powder charge in the shell. This fuse catches fire so soon as the gun is fired, and continues to burn as the projectile speeds through the air. We can plainly see from these facts that if a shrapnel is to injure the enemy it must burst before their front; it further follows that, if it is to prove effective, the right moment for its bursting must be accurately calculated. Hence the great difficulty in shrapnel firing is found in setting the fuse, and were it not for that it must be a most murderous projectile, and far superior to canister, as the shrapnel leaves the gun in a solid form, and naturally flies farther ere it