MECHANICS AND USEFUL ARTS. 95 



200 yards Thrice as good. 



300 yards Seven times better. 



400 yards Eleven times better. 



500 yards The improved musket rifle hit nearly as often as at 150 

 yards, but no musket ball hit. 



600 yards The new gun hit nearly the third of what hit at 150 

 yards' distance. 



700 yards Hit nearly the same as at 600 yards' distance. 



800 yards Hit nearly one-fifth as at 150 yards' distance. 



It will be seen, therefore, from these experiments, that if 150 men of 

 any of these four regiments were armed with the improved gun and 

 bzlle-a-tige, that at distances of from 300 to 600 yards, they would in one 

 minute do more execution than 525 men at similar distances and the 

 same time with the old muskets and amunition ; consequently 1,500 

 men can be made equal to 5,250 men, or 15,000 American soldiers 

 can now be drilled and armed to do as much execution as could have 

 been done by 50,000 of the veterans of the revolution. 



ORNAMENTING METALS. 



Fertile, varied, and peculiar, as are and have been the various pro- 

 cesses devised for the purposes of ornamenting objects made of metal, 

 we are not aware of any which, in simplicity and beauty, at all equals 

 one that has recently been brought into operation. It emulates in 

 economy the application of transfer-printing, to the adornment of 

 japan and papier-mache objects, or the same to china, when in its 

 biscuit state. In all probability the accidental phenomenon of a com- 

 paratively soft substance leaving, by pressure, its impress on a harder 

 material, may have been noticed ; it has, however, been reserved for 

 Mr. Sturges, of Birmingham, to apply the same to a practically useful 

 purpose in manufactures, and to devise through its means a style of 

 surface-ornamentation, limited only in versatility by the illimitable 

 resources afforded in the results of the machines of the lace-makers, or 

 the endless forms and devices which may be suggested by human fancy. 

 The process in its simplest form will be best described by stating that, 

 if two or more plates of metal are taken, and between these is laid a 

 piece of wire-webbing, thread lace, perforated or cut paper, and the 

 two sheets of metal, with the pattern of thread lace, wire-web, or 

 paper between them, be passed through a pair of ordinary rolls employ- 

 ed for the rolling of metal the two sheets of metal being thereafter 

 separated, an impression of the pattern will be found on each, corres- 

 ponding to the compressibility of the material out of which the pattern 

 is formed, or the hardness of the sheet of metal to be so ornamented. 

 The known delicacy of such a material as thread lace, opposed to the 

 hard and comparatively unyielding metallic substance to be orna- 

 mented, and yet by its agency indenting the latter, will doubtless be 

 productive of matter of wonder to the uninitiated ; we can, however, 

 inform our readers that we have seen the same piece of lace employed 

 in ten successive operations in Britannia metal ornamentation, and 



