94 ANNUAL OF SCIENTIFIC DISCOVERT. 



On a late occasion Major Minie hit a " but " seven times out of ten at 

 the immense distance of 1,804 yards! with sufficient force to pass 

 through a cuirass and kill. The " but" was 100 feet in length and 18 

 feet high, representing, for example, though not perfectly, thirty 

 mounted men. It is frightful to think of the havoc which a well- 

 trained army, equipped with these guns, might make on an enemy 

 equipped after the old style. 



The reason why the Minie ball has not been adopted is simply be- 

 cause the balle-a-tige was invented first, and thus obtained precedence. 

 The results obtained with each are similar. The gun required for 

 the latter ball, as mentioned before, requires to be of a peculiar con- 

 struction, which may be described in a few words: a steel pin, 3-16 

 inch in diameter, is screwed into the breech-pin, upon which the ball 

 strikes when put into the barrel, (the powder being first put in,) and 

 rests there, sustained on the pin, not on the powder. The conse- 

 quence is, that when the heavy iron ramrod, made with a concave but, 

 strikes down on the ball, the pin is driven upward into the substance 

 of the ball, spreading it out on all sides firmly against the walls of the 

 barrel, which slugs it more perfectly, and consequently directs the 

 ball with more accuracy than is possible to obtain with any other 

 slugging. The same principle of slugging, therefore, is used in both 

 balls, but produced by different methods: in the ball just described, 

 being produced by ramming, while with the Minie ball it is produced 

 by the explosion. The balls are both of precisely the same exterior 

 form and of the same weight ; when the ball weighs 40 grammes, the 

 charge of powder is 4 grammes, and when the ball weighs 50 grammes 

 the charge is 5 grammes. By this principle of slugging, therefore, it 

 will be seen that the old uncertain musket is at once converted into a 

 close shooting rifle of a most extraordinary range, before which no 

 field artillery known to science could sustain itself. It is the opinion 

 of the most distinguished French officers that heavy cavalry can be 

 no longer used with effect, and that artillery must be restricted to 

 siege operations and the defence of fortified places. 



To show more forcibly the difference in power and execution be- 

 tween the old musket with round ball, and the improved musket with 

 balle-a-tige, I may cite the following experiment, which I did not see, 

 but for the truth of whicji I have the best evidence. Four regiments 

 of French soldiers (not picked,) fired, at the Polygone of Vincennes, 

 300,000'balls, one-half out of the old regulation musket with the usual 

 round balls, and the other half with the improved rifle-musket, with 

 balles-a-tige. To make the experiment fair each man fired the same 

 number of balls from each kind of gun. The following was the re- 

 sult: 



From 30 to 100 yards superiority rather in favor of the new gun. 

 (Distinguished British officers have objected that the new French gun 

 was not adapted to a short range, and therefore less efficient than the 

 old musket. These experiments disprove the assertion.) 



150 yards The imprqyecj. gun twice as good as old musket; -md 

 round ball. 



