PATCHES. 353 



agent, and at the same time to prevent windage by filling: 

 up the space between the ball and the barrel. They are made 

 of a circular form for spherical and short conical balls, and 

 are placed over the mouth of the barrel with the greased 

 side downwards, the ball being pushed down upon them. 

 The common circular patches are not suitable to any bullet, 

 having much cylinder to it, as, if the patch is thick enough 

 to give a good fit at the base of the bullet, the gathers- 

 formed by the edges round the shoulder render it very hard., 

 if not impossible, to ram it down; and if allowance for this 

 is made in the thickness of the material, or in windage, the 

 base does not then fit close. For this reason circular 

 patches are only applicable to round or conoidal projectiles. 

 They may, however, be used by altering their form from 

 that of a circle to that of a cross, the centre part of which 

 is exactly the size of the base of the bullet. The readiest 

 mode of getting at this shape is to cut the patches circular 

 first; then lay on them a steel or tin pattern of the cross 

 required, and cut out the angles with a sharp-pointed knife r 

 or a stamp may be made to cut them out at one blow. 

 However used, patches are troublesome, and render the 

 loading slow, being difficult to separate and dirty to handle. 

 Hence many good shots (among whom may be included Mr. 

 Purdey and that high authority Mr. Boucher) dispense with 

 patches altogether, and merely dip the base of the bullet in 

 a composition of beeswax and tallow, as described at page 

 323, in an extract from one of Mr. Boucher's letters. 



A correspondent of the Field (" F. J. J.," of Derby) has 

 suggested a simple contrivance for keeping patches on the 

 ball ready for use, whereby the act of loading in the field is 

 considerably accelerated. He says : " The inconvenience is 

 known to all rifle shooters of handling the patches and balls- 

 separately in the field, picking the former with difficulty out 

 of the box, and adjusting them with the ball at the mouth 

 of the rifle. To obviate this, I have had made a number of 

 tin cylinders, the length of the ball or bullet (I use the 

 Enfield), and just admitting the patch and bullet. One end 

 of the cylinder is slightly trumpet-mouthed to ease the fit- 

 ting in of the patch and bullet. Its appearance is as in 



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