THE HISTORY OF FIST unliS. • IT has been the work

of more than five centuries to bring our en- gines of war to theirpresent state of perfection, and much still remains to be done for their improvement. Done this must be

and quickly, but the cost will be great ; for the end sought will not be attained without tasking the powers of many minds, and the resources of many arts. Countless experiments must be made, and the chance of failure upon failure must be intrepidly en- countered. The expense of these efforts will be defrayed in the first instance partly by individuals and partly by the Government, but ultimately it will fall in one shape or another on the nation at large. It is for the purpose of reconciling us to this inevitable burthen that Captain White has written his very interesting sketch of the history of our firearms. It is addressed to the general reader, and will enable him to judge of the vast difficul-

ties which had to be overcome in the slow advance from the rude projectile weapons of the fourteenth century to the Enfield rifle and the Armstrong gun ; and also to apprehend the reasons which from time to time cause such an enormous addition to the military expenditure of this country.

Captain White treats the claim of the Chinese to the honour of having anticipated Europe in the invention of gunpowder, as an impudent fable palmed upon the Jesuits by that most vain and lying of all nations, and eagerly adopted by the European literati of the last century in accordance with a fashion then prevalent amongst them. Equally erroneous is the common belief that gunpowder was invented by Roger Bacon in the thir- teenth century. It is true that in his "Opus Majus" he thus

addresses Pope Clement IV., A.D. 1267: "Take saltpetre, char-

coal, and sulphur, and you will make thunder and lightning, if you only know the art;' but at the same time he distinctly affirms this composition to be then employed in many parts of the world as a child's toy. Gunpowder is in fact identical with the ma- terial of the Greek fire, the secret of which was known to the rulers of Byzantium as early as the seventh century, and was strictly preserved by them until the Arabs became possessed of it in the beginning of the thirteenth century. A receipt for making it, translated soon afterwards from the Arabic by a Spanish friar, is preserved in the Bodleian at Oxford ; and Sir Francis Pal- grave, who discovered this document, reminds us how we have unwittingly recorded the origin of Greek fire in our word " cracker " from the Anglo-Norman le cracke " for " le Grec." For six centuries, the Greek fire had been a state secret, and had never been applied during all that time to the expulsion of missiles from tubes. It needed even another century to bring this conception to the birth. It is not known in what year the first cannon was constructed, only it is certain that no such arm was known in 1321, that five years afterwards two officers were appointed by the republic of Florence to make shot and metal can- non for the defence of its castles and villages ; and that in Spain, Italy, France, England, and Germany, the dates of the public documents in which cannon are first mentioned scarcely differ from one another by ten years. At first the new weapons ap-

pear to have possessed far more of a moral than a physical effect, and it was long before they superseded the old kinds of military engines. Many things retarded the general use of cannon—the bad quality of the gunpowder, the scarcity of iron, the difficulty experienced in casting it, and the bad state of the roads, or the total want of them, which prevented the transport of heavy guns on long marches. The few cannon used by Edward III. in his invasion of France, were little larger than our duck guns, and could have been of no use against masonry. Schwartz's discovery of the granulation of gunpowder in the middle of the fourteenth century led to .great improvements in gunnery, and the art made steady progress in the fifteenth. The terrible effects of Charles the Eighth's artillery in Italy forced the Italians to exert their subtle wits in improving their means of defence by the in- troduction of what is termed the modern system of fortification. The ablest military engineer of Italy in the sixteenth century was the great painter Leonardo daVinci. He was employed in the former capacity by Ludovico Sforza and by Caesar Borgia • and his voluminous note-books now in the French Institute, show that he anticipated Bacon in his views of the right method of in- terrogating Nature, and Galileo, Copernicus, Gassendi and D'Alembert in the discovery of cosmological and dynamic laws.

• Our Engines of War, and How we got to snake them. By Captain Jervis- White Jervis, M.P., R.A. The .Rifie Musket. By Captain Jervis-White Jervis, M.P., R.A. Published by Chapman and

" I will treat of this subject," he says, "but first of all I will make some experiments, because my intention is to quote experience, and then to show why bodies are forced to act in a certain manner. This is the system which should be observed in the study of the phenomena of Nature." Before the seventeenth century the increased resistance of ma- sonry had induced artillerymen to obtain a flank fire, and Albert Darer and Leonardo da Vinci had studied. the advantages result- ing from the ricochet of shot.

"But Vauban was the first to unite the two, so as to create a formidable system of attack. Throwing up his batteries on the flank of a bastion, ho lessened the charge and elevated the guns so that the shot went just clear of the enemy's parapet and dropped within their works; when, bounding along, they raked the whole length of a face and disabled its guns. The effect of this simple idea was to cause perfect consternation, not only in the minds of engineers, but also in that of Governments. The former were vexed that their numerous self-supporting fronts, well strengthened with cannon, should be rendered useless by shot hopping along and destroying their armaments, and they proposed various ineffectual remedies ; amongst others, earthen mounds at certain intervals called traverses,' but shells were then used, and the traverses destroyed. Further than- this, however, the evil could not be remedied, for all these suggestions cost money."

Besides the advantages of ricochet, another principle taught by Vauban was how to breach systematically, by first sapping the whole wall as low as possible before directing the fire to the upper portion. Resting on the practical results of these two ideas, artillerymen and engineers made no further advance in science or practice until Robins published in 1742 his " New Principles of Gunnery," which led to vast improvements in field and siege ordnance. These consisted chiefly in a great diminution of the weight of the guns and a great increase in the weight of the shot thrown by them. Robins also dwelt forcibly on the immense ad- vantages which would be gained by the nation which should first equip its armies with well-made rifled barrels. France first began to act on this hint after the peace of 1815, and a long series of experiments resulted in the production of the Millie rifle of 1851, of which 28,000 were ordered for the British army by the Marquis of Anglesea. But the Minis rifle being far from perfect, Lord Hardinge requested the leading English gun-makers to send in specimens of improved rifles, the weight being limited to nine pounds, and these were submitted to a committee at Enfield Lock.

No single weapon presented the required perfection, but from a general modification resulted the beautiful Enfield rifle in use in the British service ; and the committee further adopted as the service bullet one proposed by Mr. Pritchett, junior, the London gun-maker, which had its outer surface perfectly plain, and a hollow so constructed as to do away with the neces- sity of the iron cap. But before such a musket could be made, it must be borne in mind that many other points had to be thought of besides the theory of projectiles. Cort had to take out in 1783 his patent for puddling and rolling of iron, and many an iron-master had to improve on Cort's patent before Mr. Marshal of Wedgebury could supply that splendid iron which enables our barrels to be so light though so tough. Sheffield had to devote its energies to steel before we could get our present locks and bayonets ; Germany and Italy had to be ransacked for sound walnut timber ; lead had to be purified, and compression bullet-machines perfected by Anderson, before the canuelures or iron cups could be done away with ; in fact, the small arm of the present day is the result of the progress of science in all its branches. And so is the present heavy ordnance."

Lancaster followed with his so-called rifle, the bore of which is smooth, but so contrived as to give the required twist to the bullet as effectually as any rifled barrel. The Lancaster rifle shoots as well as the Enfield, and is in one respect a better soldier's weapon, because it is less liable to fouling. In Whitworth's rifle, with its very close-fitting bullet, the liability to fouling is exces- sive, and might render the weapon perfectly useless in action. Some amount of fouling is inevitable with every kind of powder now known, for the very best when ignited leaves a residue which will not burn. Part of this is blown out at the muzzle, but the rest cakes round the breech, and up the sides of the barrel.

" Before, therefore, we can reduce our windage [i. e. the loose-fitting of the bullet in the barrel], we must improve our powder, and this matter will not only try the feelings of the Chancellor of the Exchequer, but many a practical manufacturer, many an ardent inventor and patentee, before it is realized. In the meantime breech-loading appears to present decided ad- vantages with respect to this fouling of rifled arms, for the cartridge, not having to be rammed down, the bullet can be allowed less windage ; but, like many other scientific subjects, the necessity for a thing and its execu- tion are two very different matters ; and to discover a simple mode of loading at the breech, and yet prevent the escape of the gas of the powder when ignited, has, perhaps, occupied as many brains and resulted in as many failures as any subject I am aware of."

The Lancaster gun is as yet the most formidable piece of heavy ordnance possessed by this country, and Captain Jervis sees no reason why its principle should not be adapted to field artillery. The shells thrown by it cost in 1854 some 201. a piece ; subsequent experience has diminished their cost to one twentieth.

" Whilst Mr. Lancaster was engaged perfecting his large shells, Sir William Armstrong was directing his energies towards improving field- guns, and the success which has attended his labours demonstrates the ad- vantage of continually investigating each separate part of gunnery in con- nexion with the science of the day ; for the Armstrong gun is but the result of the studies of numberless artillerists during the last twenty years, im- proved and put together by a practical mind with the assistance of the Eng-

lish mechanic Taking, therefore, each individual part of Sir W. Armstrong's gun, there is not much that is novel in it ; but the manner in which he has brought these several parts to act one with another is not only novel, but has given to field artillery a range and an accuracy far more for- midable in comparison with the gun hitherto in use, than the Enfield rifle is to the Euglish musket."

The outcome of the whole series of facts presented by our author is that each telling improvement on the science of gunnery " is not the simple result of sudden thought in this or that man, but of the careful research of innumerable brains." For this reason, he says- " When we take into consideration the defences of this country, we must be careful not to place our sole reliance upon Government factories, which can have neither the same inducement or the same opportunity of improving on established patterns as men engaged in trade. Thus the competition of the iron-foundries, and the constant experiments which they carry on, from casting an improved rail to that of a gigantic mortar, adds n fund of experience which cannot be acquired in Woolwich Arsenal,- for if one firm becomes celebrated for its cast-steel and another for its malleable iron, this celebrity is the result of many a long and expensive trial, on the success of which depended the fortune of the owner. And when we think of the number of these steel and iron works, and yet how seldom a bond-fide im- provement affects the mass of them, we may judge how little can be effected by a single Government factory, isolated by position and by interests from the iron trade. And so it is with small-arms. Look over the Patent List, and see how many minds have been occupied in conning over the mechanical theory of the lock, the form of the bullet, the rifling of a barrel, the puri- fying of the iron of which the barrel is mado,—even the curve of the trigger or butt-plate of a musket, and it will be at once seen how necessary it is to maintain the small arm trade in all its integrity. Take, as an illustration of this fact, the revolver pistol. There is nothing new in the idea. Pepys tells us of a gun to discharge seven times ; the best of all devices that I ever saw, and very serviceable, and not a bauble ; for it is much approved of, and many thereof made ;' and the United Service Institution possesses a revolver of the time of Charles I., identical in principle with that of Colt's. Yet would we never have heard of the latter, had it not been for that mar- vellous emigration to the gold diggings of California and Australia, which created a demand for a powerful portable weapon of defence, and caused not simply the revival of an old idea, but also its practical solution, by the aid of modern machinery ; so that a man can now carry in his waist- belt a weapon to be relied on, similar in principle to that which two centuries ago not only required a holster, but was most likely to be out of order when wanted.

• • •

" Thanks to our insular position, we have not much to fortify. The protection of our commercial harbours from a coup do main, the completing the defences of a few such points as Portsmouth, Plymouth, and Pembroke, and fortifying Woolwich Arsenal, is about all we have to do on that head to insure comparative security. But that much must be done ; and as to our engines of war, let us reward successful competitors, as we have done Sir William Armstrong, and we shall find capable men taxing their energies to keep this country a-head of all improvements in implements of warfare."